Preparation of four-photon polarization-entangled decoherence-free states employing weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities

With the assistance of weak cross-Kerr nonlinearities, we present a preparation scheme of four-photon polarization-entangled decoherence-free states, which can be used to construct the minimal optical decoherence-free subspaces where a logical qubit is fully protected against collective decoherence. To complete the preparation task, one spatial entanglement process, two polarization entanglement processes, and one detecting process are applied. The fulfillments of the above processes are contributed by a cross-Kerr nonlinear interaction between the signal photons and a coherent state via Kerr media. Exploiting the available single-photon resource and simple linear optics elements, this scheme is feasible and desirable to be extended to the construction of multiphoton decoherence-free states against the collective decoherence.