Decoherence of gaussian and nongaussian photon-number entangled states in a noisy channel

We consider photon-number entangled states (PNES) and study the degradation of their entanglement in a noisy channel, using different separability criteria and a recently proposed measure of nonGaussianity as key tools. Upon comparing Gaussian and nonGaussian states within the class, we collect some evidence that Gaussian states are maximally robust against noise, i.e. the complete loss of entanglement occurs in maximal time. However, the gap with respect to nonGaussian states is negligible for sufficiently high energy of the states. © 2011 World Scientific Publishing Company.