Experimental Characterization of Entanglement Dynamics in Noisy Channels

We experimentally characterize the bipartite entanglement under one-sided open system dynamics and verify the recently formulated entanglement factorization law [Nature Phys. 4, 99 (2008)]. The one-sided open system dynamics is realized by implementing a phase damping and an amplitude decay channel, respectively, acting on one of the qubits, by an all-optical setup. Our results greatly simplify the characterization of entanglement dynamics and will play an important role in the construction of complex quantum networks.