Nonlocal restoration of two-mode squeezing in the presence of strong optical loss

We present the experimental realization of a theoretical effect discovered by Olivares and Paris (2009 Phys. Rev. A 80 032329), in which a pair of entangled optical beams undergoing independent losses can see nonlocal correlations restored by the use of a nonlocal resource correlating the losses. Twin optical beams created in an entangled, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) state by an optical parametric oscillator above threshold were subjected to 50% loss from beamsplitters in their paths. The resulting severe degradation of the amplitude-quadrature correlations between the two beams was then suppressed when another, independent EPR state impinged upon the other input ports of the beamsplitters, effectively entangling the losses inflicted to the initial EPR state. The additional EPR beam pair was classically coherent with the primary one but had no quantum correlations with it. This result may find applications as a 'quantum tap' for entanglement.