Experimental demonstration of tripartite entanglement and controlled dense coding for continuous variables

A tripartite entangled state of bright optical field is experimentally produced using an Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entangled state for continuous variables and linear optics. The controlled dense coding among a sender, a receiver, and a controller is demonstrated by exploiting the tripartite entanglement. The obtained three-mode "position" correlation and relative "momentum" correlation between the sender and the receiver, and thus the improvements of the measured signal to noise ratios of amplitude and phase signals with respect to the shot noise limit are 3.28 and 3.18 dB, respectively. If the mean photon number (n) over bar equals 11 the channel capacity can be controllably inverted between 2.91 and 3.14. When (n) over bar is larger than 1.0 and 10.52, the channel capacity of the controlled dense coding is predicted to exceed the ideal single channel capacity of coherent and squeezed state light communication, respectively.