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# Efficient distillation beyond qubits

## I Introduction

The possibility of entanglement distillation plays a crucial role in Quantum communication and Quantum information processing (cf. Springer ). Together with quantum error correction it enables all the fascinating applications provided by Quantum information theory in the presence of a noisy and interacting environment. It provides a method to overcome decoherence without requiring a complete isolation from the environment.

The usual abstract way of thinking about entanglement distillation is the following: Two parties, Alice and Bob, situated at distant locations share $`n`$ copies of a mixed entangled quantum state $`\rho `$, which they may have obtained by sending one part of a pure maximally entangled state through a noisy quantum channel. Assume that both parties are able to perform any collective quantum operation, which merely acts locally on their part of the $`n`$ copies. Moreover, Alice and Bob are connected via a classical channel, such that they can perform arbitrary many rounds of local quantum operations, where each round may depend on the measurement outcomes of all the preceding operations on both sides. The set of operations accessible in this way is called LOCC (local operations and classical communication).

It was shown in one of the seminal works from the early years of quantum information theory BennettPRL  that under the above conditions Alice and Bob can for certain two-qubit states distill a smaller number $`m`$ of states $`\rho ^{}`$, which are closer to the maximally entangled state than the initial ones, from a larger number $`nm`$ of weaker entangled states $`\rho `$. This can be done in such a way that in the limit $`n\mathrm{}`$ the output states $`\rho ^{}`$ become maximally entangled. The asymptotic ratio $`m/n`$ is then called the rate of the distillation protocol and the maximally accessible rate under all LOCC protocols is an important measure of entanglement, the distillable entanglement $`D(\rho )`$. The latter quantifies in some sense the amount of useful entanglement contained in the state $`\rho `$.

Up to now the hashing/breeding distillation protocol presented in BennettPRL ; BennettPRA , which is adapted to Bell diagonal states of two qubits, is essentially the only protocol leading to a non-zero rate in the asymptotic limit.

The present paper is devoted to generalize these protocols to higher dimensions. We will thereby closely follow the ideas of Ref.BennettPRL ; BennettPRA . The protocols are adapted to states which are diagonal in a basis of maximally entangled states or mapped onto such states by an LOCC twirl operation. The main step is to translate the apparent quantum task into a classical problem in such a way that all the operations involved are LOCC. The following results are obtained:

* We provide an entanglement assisted distillation protocol (breeding) that works for any finite dimension $`d`$. It is in this case assumed that Alice and Bob share maximally entangled states initially, which they may have obtained with a different protocol (e.g. hashing in a prime dimensional subspace) and with a smaller rate. The attained distillation rate is given by

$$\mathrm{log}_2dS\left(𝒯(\rho )\right),$$
(1)
where $`S\left(𝒯(\rho )\right)`$ is the von Neumann entropy of the twirled state $`\rho `$.
* We show that a hashing protocol exists for prime dimensions $`d`$, which does not require any predistilled states. The obtained rate is the same as in Eq. (1). The method can easily be generalized to dimensions which are powers of primes, if one uses a different basis of maximally entangled states.
* Both protocols, breeding and hashing, are shown to be optimal for a $`(d1)`$ parameter family of low rank states. This generalizes the observation of Rains REbound2  for the case $`d=2`$.
* We discuss methods for improving the rates for Isotropic states. In particular the projection onto local subspaces will turn out to yield the optimal rate in the limit of large dimensions.

Despite the practical relevance and quite considerable effort in the theory of entanglement distillation, many of the basic questions are yet unanswered. So do we neither know a decidable necessary and sufficient criterion for distillability in Hilbert spaces $`^d^d`$ with $`d>2`$, nor do we know $`D(\rho )`$ even for otherwise simple quantum states $`\rho `$. What makes the investigation of distillability so difficult is on the one hand the asymptotic limit ($`n\mathrm{}`$) and on the other hand the mathematically intractable set of LOCC operations.

However, many partial results have been obtained in various directions, and before we go into the details of the present article we want at least to briefly recall some of them:

#### Distillability:

For the case of two qubits it was shown in 2Q  that every entangled state is distillable. A general necessary condition for the distillability of a state $`\rho `$ is the fact that its partial transpose $`\rho ^{T_A}`$, defined with respect to a given product basis by $`ij|\rho ^{T_A}|kl=kj|\rho |il`$, has a negative eigenvalue HHH2 . Except for special cases like states on $`^2^n`$ 2n ; IHa  and Gaussian states Gauss  it is however unclear whether this condition is sufficient as well. There is some evidence presented in IHa ; IBM  that this may not be the case and that there are indeed undistillable states, whose partial transpose is not positive (NPPT). However, it was shown in VWPRL  (see also otheractivations ) that every NPPT state becomes distillable when adding a certain bound entangled state with positive partial transpose (PPT). Moreover, this activation process was shown to require only an infinitesimal amount of entanglement contained in the additional PPT state VWPRL .

#### Distillation protocols:

Up to now, essentially the only mixed state distillation protocol leading to a non-zero rate in the asymptotic limit is the breeding/hashing protocol presented in BennettPRL ; BennettPRA , which is adapted to Bell-diagonal states of two qubits. There are, however, several purification schemes which increase the purity and entanglement of a state without yielding a non-zero rate on their own. The best known examples are the recurrence protocols presented in BennettPRL ; BennettPRA  (see imperfect  for the discussion of imperfect operations) and Ekert . These were investigated also for higher dimensions in HHHred  and AlberJex . In Smolin  it was shown that these methods can be improved by using more than one source state per target. A systematic generalization of the local unitaries applied in the recurrence method for two qubit systems has recently been provided in Frank . A protocol which is analog to the hashing procedure but uses PPT preserving rather than LOCC operations is described in Rainssemi .

#### Distillable Entanglement:

For pure states the distillable entanglement is equal to the von Neumann entropy of the reduced state Bennettpure . For mixed states only bounds are known, which can be calculated for some very special cases (cf. OO ). The best known upper bound for the distillable entanglement can be found in Rainsbound . A closely related bound, which we will describe in detail later, is given by the relative entropy of entanglement REbound1 ; REbound2 .

#### Relations to other Quantum information tasks:

It was already noticed in BennettPRA  that a distillation protocol involving only one-way classical communication (like the hashing protocol) corresponds to a quantum error correcting code and vice versa. Moreover, upper bounds for the distillable entanglement allow one to obtain upper bounds for quantum channel capacities (cf. HHHchannelcap ). In particular, the inequality

$$D_1(\rho )S\left(\mathrm{tr}_B[\rho ]\right)S(\rho ),$$
(2)
where $`D_1(\rho )`$ is the distillable entanglement for one-way communication protocols, implies Shannon-like formulas for quantum capacities, providing the quantum noisy coding theorem HHHchannelcap . The inequality (2) is consistent with the results we obtain in Sec. V.

An important application of distillation and purification schemes is also the possibility of factoring out an eavesdropper for secret quantum communication Ekert ; BriegelPAA . This is known as Quantum privacy amplification.

## II Preliminaries

Let us first introduce the preliminaries we need for the distillation protocols described in Sec. III and IV. We begin with characterizing the states for which the protocols are adapted and we will subsequently specify the set of required local operations.

### II.1 Basis of maximally entangled states

Bases of maximally entangled states $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{kl}\}`$, $`k,l\{0,\mathrm{},d1\}`$ exist for any Hilbert space $`=^d^d`$ and correspond to an orthonormal operator basis of $`d^2`$ unitary $`d\times d`$ matrices $`\{U_{kl}\}`$ via

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{kl}\left(\mathrm{𝟏}U_{kl}\right)|\mathrm{\Omega },$$
(3)
with $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ being a maximally entangled state. The latter is in the following chosen to be $`|\mathrm{\Omega }=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{00}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{d}}_{j=0}^{d1}|jj`$. A general construction procedure teledens  for unitary operator bases involves Latin squares and complex Hadamard matrices and the best known example constructed in this way is of the form

$$U_{kl}=\underset{r=0}{\overset{d1}{}}\eta ^{rl}|krr|,\eta =e^{\frac{2\pi i}{d}}$$
(4)
where $``$ means addition modulo $`d`$. The set of unitaries in (4) is orthonormal with respect to the Hilbert-Schmidt scalar product, i.e., $`\mathrm{tr}\left[U_{ij}^{}U_{kl}\right]=d\delta _{ik}\delta _{jl}`$, and forms a discrete Weyl system since $`U_{ij}U_{kl}=\eta ^{jk}U_{ik,jl}`$.

In the following we will solely use the maximally entangled basis from Eqs.(3,4) or tensor products thereof and denote the first index as the shift and the second as the phase index.

### II.2 Symmetric states

Symmetric states commuting with a group of local unitaries play an important and paradigmatic role in Quantum information theory and in particular in the context of entanglement distillation. The best known examples are Werner states, Isotropic states and Bell diagonal states. The latter are convex combinations of the four maximally entangled Bell states of two qubits and contain in this case the Isotropic states, which are for two qubit systems in turn equivalent to Werner states.

In analogy to the two qubit case, we will call a state on $`^d^d`$ Bell diagonal  if it can be written as a convex combination of maximally entangled states $`P_{ij}=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{ij}\mathrm{\Psi }_{ij}|`$. The corresponding symmetry group is given by

$$G=\{U_{i,j}U_{i,j}\},$$
(5)
which is an abelian group with the property that its commutant, which is again spanned by $`G`$, contains $`d^2`$ one-dimensional projectors $`\{P_{ij}\}`$. Hence, for $`\{\lambda _{ij}\}`$ being convex weights:

$$\rho =\underset{ij}{}\lambda _{ij}P_{ij}gG:[\rho ,g]=0.$$
(6)
Moreover, every not symmetric state $`\rho `$ can be mapped onto a Bell diagonal state $`𝒯(\rho )`$ by means of a discrete twirl operation

$$𝒯(\rho )=\frac{1}{d^2}\underset{gG}{}g^{}\rho g,$$
(7)
which can be implemented by means of local operations and classical communication (LOCC).

Isotropic states, which are completely characterized by their fidelity $`f:=\mathrm{\Omega }|\rho |\mathrm{\Omega }`$, are a special instance of Bell diagonal states with $`\lambda _{00}=f`$ and $`\lambda _{ij}=(1f)/(d^21)`$ for $`(i,j)(0,0)`$. An Isotropic state is entangled and distillable iff $`f>\frac{1}{d}`$ HHHred .

### II.3 Local operations and measurements

An essential ingredient for any distillation protocol acting on two qubit systems is the CNOT operation. One possibility of generalizing this operation to higher dimensions is to use a controlled shift operation (CS) HHHred , which acts as

$$C|i|j=|i|ji,$$
(8)
where the first tensor factor is the source and the second the target. It is readily verified that a bilateral controlled shift operation (BCS), where both parties in a bipartite system apply CS operations locally on a tensor product of two maximally entangled states, acts as

$$(CC)|\mathrm{\Psi }_{ij}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{kl}=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{i,jl}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{ki,l},$$
(9)
where the first tensor product on the l.h.s. in (9) corresponds to the Alice$`|`$Bob split, whereas the others correspond to the source$`|`$target split. Note that the target state picks up the shift index of the source, i.e., $`kki`$, while the source remains unchanged iff $`l=0`$.

If we measure a target state of the form $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{kl}`$ in computational basis, then $`k`$ is the difference of the measurement outcomes. In this way we can obtain information about the shift index of an unknown source state, if we know the target state: We first apply a BCS operation and then measure the target state in computational basis.

An analogous transformation can be defined for the phase indices, since we can simply interchange the two indices by the following local unitary operation:

$$\left(V\overline{V}\right)P_{ij}\left(V\overline{V}\right)^{}=P_{j,i},V=\frac{1}{\sqrt{d}}\underset{k,l}{}\eta ^{kl}|kl|.$$
(10)
So we can define a modified bilateral controlled shift operation (mBCS) by first applying a $`V\overline{V}`$ transformation to the source state, followed by a BSC operation on source and target and then undoing the local operation on the source state by a $`(V\overline{V})^{}`$ rotation. The mBCS operation then acts as

$$P_{ij}P_{kl}P_{il,j}P_{kj,l},$$
(11)
where the second tensor factor corresponds to the target again.

Assume now we have one target state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{00}`$ and $`n`$ source states with shift indices $`k_1,\mathrm{},k_n`$ and phase indices $`l_1,\mathrm{},l_n`$. We now apply $`s_a`$ BCS operations and $`p_a`$ mBCS operations to the $`a`$-th source and the target. If we then measure the target state again in computational basis, the difference of the measurement outcomes will be

$$\left(\underset{a=1}{\overset{n}{}}k_as_a\right)\left(\underset{a=1}{\overset{n}{}}l_ap_a\right)=:\stackrel{}{k},\stackrel{}{s}\stackrel{}{l},\stackrel{}{p}.$$
(12)
This enables us to obtain some information about the distribution of the shift and phase indices of the source states without disturbing them.

In the following we will organize the shift and phase indices of a sequence of maximally entangled states in a single vector $`\stackrel{}{S}:=(k_1,\mathrm{},k_n,l_1,\mathrm{}l_n)`$ and accordingly the multiplicities of the BCS and mBCS operations in a vector $`\stackrel{}{M}:=(s_1,\mathrm{},s_n,p_1,\mathrm{}p_n)`$. Both $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ then belong to $`\{0,\mathrm{},d1\}^{2n}`$, i.e. they are elements of the group $`_d^{2n}`$ with addition modulo $`d`$.

The sequence of local operations characterized by $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ followed by a measurement of an additionally required target state $`P_{00}`$ thus yields the information

$$\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{S}:=\underset{i=1}{\overset{2n}{}}M_iS_i=\stackrel{}{k},\stackrel{}{s}\stackrel{}{l},\stackrel{}{p}$$
(13)
about a sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ of maximally entangled states, without disturbing the latter.

To complete the list of later on required basic local operations we have still to introduce a generalization of a $`\pi /2`$ rotation given by

$$u(g):=\underset{k}{}e^{\frac{i\pi }{d}k^2g}|kk|,$$
(14)
where $`g`$ is an arbitrary number. We will use this within bilateral operations of the form $`u(g)\overline{u}(g)`$ and $`v(g)\overline{v}(g)`$, where $`v(g):=V^{}u(g)V`$. These unitary operations act on a maximally entangled state $`P_{kl}`$ as

$`\left[u(g)\overline{u}(g)\right]P_{kl}\left[u(g)\overline{u}(g)\right]^{}=P_{k,lgk},`$ (15)
$`\left[v(g)\overline{v}(g)\right]P_{kl}\left[v(g)\overline{v}(g)\right]^{}=P_{kgl,l}.`$ (16)
### II.4 Why primes are special

Measurements based on the $`_d^{2n}`$ scalar product in Eq.(13) will play a crucial role in the entanglement distillation protocols discussed in the sequel. One of the main tasks will thereby be to choose the measurement vector $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ such that we obtain as much information about the sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ as possible. In general this can be a highly nontrivial problem. However, if the dimension $`d`$ is a prime, then choosing $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ randomly turns out to be a pretty good choice. The reason why this works well only for prime dimensions is that in this case $`_d`$ is a field, which means that it is not only an abelian group with respect to the addition modulo $`d`$, but also with respect to the multiplication if we exclude the zero element. That is, for $`a,b,x_d,a0`$ every equation of the form

$$b=ax\text{ mod }d$$
(17)
has a unique solution for $`x`$ if and only if $`d`$ is prime. This leads us to the following lemma:

###### Lemma 1

Let $`\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ be elements of $`_d^m`$ with $`d`$ prime. Given a scalar product $`\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y}:=_{i=1}^mx_iy_i`$ and a uniformly distributed random vector $`\stackrel{}{M}_d^m`$, the probability for $`\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{S}=\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ is equal to $`1/d`$.

Proof: We ask for the probability that $`\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}^{},\stackrel{}{M}=0`$. Since $`\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$, there exists a component $`x`$ where $`S_xS_x^{}`$ and we can write

$$0\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}^{},\stackrel{}{M}=M_x(S_xS_x^{})+\underset{ix}{}M_i(S_iS_i^{}).$$
(18)
Assume now that all $`M_i,ix`$ are already randomly chosen. Then Eq.(18) has the form of Eq.(17) with $`x=M_x`$, $`a=(S_xS_x^{})`$ and $`b=_{ix}M_i(S_i^{}S_i)`$. Since this equation has a unique solution for $`x`$ and $`M_x`$ is a uniformly distributed random variable, the probability that $`M_x`$ matches the solution is indeed $`\frac{1}{d}`$.

## III The breeding protocol

The breeding protocol is the preliminary stage of the hashing protocol discussed in the next section. Both are adapted to the distillation of Bell diagonal states and the main idea is to transform this quantum problem into the classical problem of identifying a word given the probability distribution of the respective alphabet and a restricted set of measurements.

Assume that Alice and Bob share $`n`$ copies of a Bell diagonal state $`\rho `$, such that

$$\rho ^n=\underset{k_1\mathrm{}k_n,l_1\mathrm{}l_n}{}\lambda _{k_1l_1}\mathrm{}\lambda _{k_nl_n}P_{k_1l_1}\mathrm{}P_{k_nl_n}.$$
(19)
An appropriate interpretation of Eq.(19) is to say that Alice and Bob share the state

$$P_{k_1l_1}\mathrm{}P_{k_nl_n}:=P_\stackrel{}{S}$$
(20)
with probability $`\lambda _{k_1l_1}\mathrm{}\lambda _{k_nl_n}`$. Note that if they knew the sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}=(k_1,\mathrm{},k_n,l_1,\mathrm{},l_n)`$, they could apply appropriate local unitary operations in order to obtain the standard maximally entangled state $`P_{00}^n`$ and thus gain $`n\mathrm{log}_2d`$ ebits of entanglement.

Let us further assume that they have already a sufficiently large set of predistilled maximally entangled states $`P_{00}`$ and that they are able to perform all the local operations such as BCS and mBCS operations described in the previous section. In this case they can utilize the predistilled states for performing local measurements leading to the result $`\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{S}`$ as discussed in Eq.(13) in order to obtain some information about the sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}`$. However, every single measurement $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ will destroy one of the predistilled maximally entangled states, and the task is therefore to identify the sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ using as few measurements as possible.

At this point the quantum task of distillation is transformed into an entirely classical problem: Given an unknown vector $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ and the possibility of measuring functions of the form $`\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{S}`$, how many measurements $`r`$ do we need to identify $`\stackrel{}{S}`$? Knowing $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ we gain $`n`$ maximally entangled pairs, but destroyed $`r`$, such that the overall gain would be $`(1r/n)\mathrm{log}_2d`$ ebits per copy.

We would need $`r=2n`$ measurements to identify a completely random $`\stackrel{}{S}_d^{2n}`$ with independently and uniformly distributed components. So we would destroy more entangled pairs than we gain.

Fortunately, however, the set of possible vectors $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ is not completely random but has a distribution depending on the spectrum of the Bell diagonal state $`\rho `$. In the limit of many copies there exists thus a set of likely sequences containing only $`2^{nS(\rho )}d^{2n}`$ different vectors $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ with the property that the probability that a vector $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ is contained within this set of likely sequences approaches one in the limit $`n\mathrm{}`$ likelysequences . Here $`S(\rho )`$ is the von Neumann entropy of the density matrix, which is equal to the Shannon entropy of the spectrum of $`\rho `$, i.e.

$$S(\rho )=\underset{k,l}{}\lambda _{kl}\mathrm{log}_2\lambda _{kl}.$$
(21)
Now let Alice and Bob choose each measurement $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ randomly. Then Lemma 1 tells us that if $`d`$ is prime, they can reduce their list of possible sequences by a factor of $`\frac{1}{d}`$ after every measurement by deleting every sequence, which is not consistent with the obtained result. Since their list initially contains $`2^{nS(\rho )}`$ possible sequences, $`r=nS(\rho )/\mathrm{log}_2d`$ measurements are required in order to identify $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ in the limit of large $`n`$. The rate obtained in this way in the asymptotic limit is a lower bound to the (entanglement assisted) distillable entanglement which is thus

$$D(\rho )\mathrm{log}_2dS(\rho ).$$
(22)
Let us now extend the obtained result, expressed in Eq.(22), from prime dimensions to arbitrary ones. As we have already mentioned, Lemma 1 holds only for primes and cannot be extended. A way out of this dilemma is to use controlled shift operations between Hilbert spaces of different dimensions. The definition looks similar to Eq.(23):

$$C^{}|i|j:=|i|ji,$$
(23)
with the only difference that $`i`$ runs from $`0`$ to $`d1`$ whereas $`j`$ runs from $`0`$ to $`d^{}1`$, where $`d^{}`$ is now supposed to be a prime with $`d^{}d`$. Moreover, the addition in the second ket (target) is modulo $`d^{}`$.

The penalty of the BCS and mBCS operations based on such a controlled shift operation is, that the source states after the operation will in general no longer be of the form $`P_{kl}`$ given by Eqs.(3,4). However, they still are, if the target state, acting on $`^d^{}^d^{}`$, has a phase index equal to zero. Then:

$$(C^{}C^{})|\mathrm{\Psi }_{ij}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{k0}^{}=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{i,j}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{ki,0}^{}.$$
(24)
In this way we can straightforward generalize the result of Eq.(22) to Bell diagonal states of arbitrary dimension, just by reshuffling the degrees of freedom of the predistilled maximally entangled states. Hence, the crucial point is, that the target states, which are in the case of the breeding protocol the predistilled resources, have prime dimensions.

## IV The hashing protocol

So far we have assumed that Alice and Bob initially share a set of predistilled maximally entangled states. We took into account this resource when calculating the rate, but since the additivity of the distillable entanglement is not yet decided for bipartite systems, we might expect a smaller rate for the (non entanglement assisted) distillation rate. The hashing protocol, however, achieves the same asymptotic rate as the previously discussed breeding protocol without requiring additional predistilled states. The main idea is though still the same: Alice and Bob identify the sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ by means of LOCC operations.

The protocol, however, is now a bit more complicated since if we use one of the $`n`$ states characterized by $`\stackrel{}{S}_d^{2n}`$ as target for the BCS and mBCS operations then we have to take into account the backaction from the unknown target to the remaining source states.

We will in the following choose the $`n`$-th state characterized by $`S_n`$ and $`S_{2n}`$ as the target and consider the remaining $`n1`$ states characterized by a vector $`\stackrel{}{R}=(S_1,\mathrm{},S_{n1},S_{n+1},\mathrm{},S_{2n1})`$ as source states.

In the first step of the protocol a bilateral $`v(g)\overline{v}(g)`$ rotation with a randomly chosen number $`g\{0,\mathrm{},d1\}`$ is applied to the target state. This shifts some information about the phase index of the target state into its shift index.

Then a random vector $`\stackrel{}{M}_d^{2n2}`$ is chosen and the two parties perform the respective BCS and mBCS operations. After measuring the target state, the difference of the measurement outcomes, i.e. the final shift index of the target, will be

$$\stackrel{}{M};g|\stackrel{}{S}:=\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{R}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n1}{}}M_iM_{i+n1}S_{2n}+S_n+gS_{2n}.$$
(25)
The first term $`\stackrel{}{M},\stackrel{}{R}`$ in Eq.(25) is the familiar outcome if the target state is $`P_{00}`$. The terms $`_{i=1}^{n1}M_iM_{i+n1}S_{2n}+S_n`$ correspond to the other possible targets and their backaction onto the source states, and the last term $`gS_{2n}`$ is due to the initial $`v(g)\overline{v}(g)`$ rotation.

Note that in general the outcome also depends on the order in which the different BCS and mBCS operations are carried out. For Eq.(25) first all BCS and then all mBCS operations were applied.

With the possibility of measuring functions of the form (25) we will now follow the line of argumentation of the previous section and show that the gain of information is (asymptotically) at least $`\mathrm{log}_2d`$ bits per measurement, if the dimension $`d`$ is prime. Therefore we ask again for the probability that two different sequences $`\stackrel{}{S}\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ lead to the same measurement outcome under the assumption that $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ and $`g`$ are uniformly distributed random variables. To this end we have to distinguish between three different cases:

1. The two sequences only differ in $`S_nS_n^{}`$: This is the trivial case where $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ are distinguished with unit probability.
2. $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ differ in the phase index of their target, i.e. $`S_{2n}S_{2n}^{}`$: If we assume in this case that $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ is already chosen, then the equation $`\stackrel{}{M};g|\stackrel{}{S}=\stackrel{}{M};g|\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ is of the form $`b=ax`$ with $`g`$ playing the role of $`x`$. Hence, the probability that a randomly chosen $`g`$ matches the right solution is $`\frac{1}{d}`$, if $`d`$ is prime.
3. $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{S}^{}`$ have a target state with the same phase index, i.e. $`S_{2n}=S_{2n}^{}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{R}\stackrel{}{R}^{}`$: Then Lemma 1 tells us, that a randomly chosen $`\stackrel{}{M}`$ distinguishes the two sequences $`\stackrel{}{R}\stackrel{}{R}^{}`$ with probability $`\frac{1}{d}`$, if $`d`$ is prime.

The hashing protocol consists now of several rounds of such measurements, where each round destroys the entanglement of one of the $`n`$ pairs characterized by $`\stackrel{}{S}`$. The relevant part of the system after $`r`$ rounds is thus described by a vector $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)_d^{2(nr)}`$ and the measurements applied to $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)`$ are in turn characterized by $`\stackrel{}{M}(r)_d^{2(nr2)}`$ and $`g(r)_d`$. Note that given the sequence of measurements, the vector $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)`$ deterministically depends on $`\stackrel{}{S}=\stackrel{}{S}(0)`$.

The above discussion implies now, that the probability

$`P[\stackrel{}{S}(r)\stackrel{}{S}(r)^{}`$
$`_{k=0}^{r1}:\stackrel{}{M}(r);g(r)|\stackrel{}{S}(r)\stackrel{}{S}(r)^{}=0]`$ (26)
that $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)`$ and $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)^{}`$ have agreed on all $`r`$ measurement results and thereby remain distinct, is at most $`d^r`$, if $`d`$ is prime. Since we have initially again about $`2^{nS(\rho )}`$ likely sequences, we need (in the limit of large $`n`$) $`r=nS(\rho )/\mathrm{log}_2d`$ rounds in order to identify the remaining sequence $`\stackrel{}{S}(r)`$. This leads us again to the rate in Eq.(22).

What if $`d`$ is no prime? Unfortunately, we cannot extend the result to other dimensions in the way we did in the case of the breeding protocol, since we do not have any target states of prime dimension with zero phase indices. However, if the dimension is a power of a prime $`d=d^p`$, then we can easily extend the result for states which are diagonal with respect to a different basis of maximally entangled states, given by:

$$P_{\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{l}}:=\underset{i=1}{\overset{p}{}}P_{k_il_i},$$
(27)
where $`P_{k_il_i}`$ is a maximally entangled state acting on $`^d^{}^d^{}`$. The (LOCC) twirl operation, which maps an arbitrary state onto a state diagonal in this basis is given by $`\rho 𝒯^p(\rho )`$.

The hashing protocol can then be applied in the described manner to $`pn`$ tensor factors of prime dimension $`d^{}`$ and we yield in this way again the rate in Eq.(22) for states in $`d=d^p`$ dimensions. Moreover, note that isotropic states are diagonal in both bases, given by Eqs.(3,4) and Eq.(27).

## V Optimality for low rank states

It is well known from the case of two qubit systems that the hashing/breeding protocol is not optimal in general. However, for a certain $`(d1)`$ parameter family of rank deficient states, we will show that the obtained rate is equal to the relative entropy of entanglement. Since the latter is an upper bound to the distillable entanglement, this implies that the protocols are optimal in this case. For $`d=2`$ this was first noticed by Rains in REbound2 .

Consider mixed states of rank smaller than or equal $`d`$

$$\rho _\mu =\underset{l=1}{\overset{d}{}}\mu _l|\varphi _l\varphi _l|,$$
(28)
which are diagonal with respect to

$$|\varphi _l:=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{0,l}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{d}}\underset{r=0}{\overset{d1}{}}e^{\frac{2\pi i}{d}rl}|rr.$$
(29)
The set of these states forms a simplex in $`^{d1}`$ and has the property that every state $`\rho _\mu `$ except for the barycenter, for which $`\mu _l=\frac{1}{d}`$, is entangled. To see this, note first that $`\mathrm{max}_l\{\mu _l\}`$ is the fully entangled fraction. That is, if not all $`\mu _l`$ are equal, then the fully entangled fraction is larger than $`\frac{1}{d}`$ and the respective state is thus entangled. On the other hand, if $`\mu _l=\frac{1}{d}`$, then

$`\rho _\mu `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{d}{}}}|\varphi _l\varphi _l|`$ (30)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{l,r,s}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi i}{d}}l(rs)\right]|r,rs,s|`$ (31)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d}}{\displaystyle \underset{r=0}{\overset{d1}{}}}|rr||rr|`$ (32)
is evidently a separable state, which is said to be maximally correlated. We will denote this state by $`\rho _{\text{sep}}`$ in the sequel.

An upper bound to the distillable entanglement is given by the relative entropy of entanglement REbound1 ; REbound2 , which is defined by

$$E_R(\rho )=\underset{\sigma }{inf}\left(\mathrm{tr}\left[\rho (\mathrm{log}_2\rho \mathrm{log}_2\sigma )\right]\right),$$
(33)
where the infimum is taken over all separable states $`\sigma `$. Hence, if we choose $`\sigma =\rho _{\text{sep}}`$, the distillable entanglement is bounded by

$$D(\rho _\mu )E_R(\rho _\mu )\mathrm{tr}\left[\rho \mathrm{log}_2\rho _{\text{sep}}\right]S(\rho _\mu ).$$
(34)
However, $`\mathrm{tr}\left[\rho \mathrm{log}_2\rho _{\text{sep}}\right]=\mathrm{log}_2d`$ and the rate achieved by the breeding/hashing protocol is thus optimal for every $`\rho _\mu `$. Strictly speaking, the hashing protocol leads to the distillable entanglement and the breeding rate is equal to the distillable entanglement $`D^{}`$ assisted by a maximally entangled resource $`\omega `$. The latter can easily be seen by noting that

$`D^{}(\rho )`$ $`=`$ $`D(\rho \omega )E_R(\omega )`$ (35)
$``$ $`E_R(\rho \omega )E_R(\omega )E_R(\rho ).`$ (36)
That is, the relative entropy of entanglement is an upper bound for the entanglement assisted distillable entanglement as well.

## VI Improving the rates for Isotropic states

For a general Bell diagonal state the introduced protocols are not optimal. In particular for states with a large entropy the rate is poor or even zero. In order to improve this, one can make use of hybrid protocols, where the first step decreases the entropy while conserving most of the entanglement, and in a second step the hashing/breeding protocol is applied. There are many ways of performing such an entropy decreasing preprocessing. We will in the following discuss two of them for the case of Isotropic states: The recurrence method which is well known for qubits BennettPRL ; BennettPRA ; Ekert  and has already been investigated by HHHred ; AlberJex  for $`d>2`$, and the projection onto local subspaces. For the latter we will show that in the limit of large dimensions the rate approaches the relative entropy of entanglement. Hence, the achieved rate is optimal in that limit.

Isotropic states, for which we will discuss both methods in more detail, have the form

$$\rho =f|\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Omega }|+\frac{1f}{d^21}\left(\mathrm{𝟏}|\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Omega }|\right).$$
(37)
That is they are depolarized maximally entangled states depending on a single fidelity parameter $`f[0,1]`$. The twirl operation mapping every state onto an isotropic state has the form $`\rho 𝑑U(U\overline{U})\rho (U\overline{U})^{}`$, i.e. it is an averaging over the unitary group $`U(d)`$ with respect to the Haar measure $`dU`$. The states in Eq.(37) are entangled (and distillable) iff $`f>\frac{1}{d}`$ HHHred .

### VI.1 The recurrence method

The recurrence method for higher dimensions and variations thereof have already been discussed in detail in HHHred  and AlberJex . For completeness, however, we will recall the main steps. The idea is to apply a BCS operation on two copies of the state and then to measure the target state in computational basis. The source states are kept whenever the measurement outcomes coincide, otherwise they are discarded. The remaining states may then be twirled onto isotropic states again and we can proceed either with iterating the recurrence method or applying the hashing/breeding procedure if the entropy of the remaining states is already sufficiently small, i.e. $`S(\rho )<\mathrm{log}_2d`$. We note that, as it was already mentioned in Ekert  for $`d=2`$, the Isotropic twirling after each step is not really necessary and in general increases the entropy and therefore decreases the rate of a subsequently applied breeding/hasing protocol. However, it is sufficient to look at the fidelity parameter $`f`$ in order to see that a recurrence preprocessing improves the rates such that every entangled Isotropic state becomes distillable.

Straightforward calculation shows that the fidelity $`f^{}`$ after applying the recurrence method once is given by

$$f^{}=\frac{1+f\left[df(d^2+d1)2\right]}{d^3f^22df+d^2+d1},$$
(38)
and the probability for equal measurement outcomes is

$$p_{\text{rec}}=\frac{d^3f^22df+d^2+d1}{(d+1)^2d(d1)}.$$
(39)
Note that the recurrence method alone does not lead to a non-zero rate since in every round we destroy or discard at least half of the resources (all the target states) and maximally entangled states are only obtained in the limit of infinitely many rounds. However, it holds that $`f^{}>f`$ and therefore $`S(\rho ^{})<S(\rho )`$ for every entangled isotropic $`\rho `$. This means that every entangled isotropic state can be distilled with a non-zero rate by applying sufficiently many rounds of the recurrence protocol followed by hashing/breeding.

There are many directions in which the recurrence method can be modified or improved. One could use more than one source state Smolin , a different bilateral operation AlberJex , neglect the Isotropic twirling Ekert , apply it to other kinds of states AlberJex  or use target and source states with different fidelities.

In Fig.1 we have applied the method as described above to an isotropic state of dimension $`d=7`$. As expected this leads to an improvement of the rate in the region where $`S(\rho )\mathrm{log}_2d`$.

### VI.2 Projecting onto local subspaces

A surprisingly efficient method for improving the distillation rate is to project the initial state locally onto blocks of smaller dimensions and to apply the hashing/breeding protocol to these subspaces.

Let $`\{Q_i=_k|kk|\}`$ be a set of $`b`$ projectors of dimension $`q_i`$ corresponding to a local projective observable with $`b`$ outcomes, i.e. $`_{i=1}^bq_i=d`$ and $`_{i=1}^bQ_i=\mathrm{𝟏}_d`$. Assume further that Alice and Bob have the same observable $`\{Q_i^A\}=\{Q_i^B\}`$ and that they apply the respective measurement to an isotropic state $`\rho `$. Again the state is kept if the results of the measurements coincide and discarded otherwise. If both parties obtain the same measurement outcome $`i`$, which happens with a probability

$$p_i=\frac{q_i}{d}f+\frac{(1f)}{(d^21)}\left(q_i^2\frac{q_i}{d}\right),$$
(40)
the state after the measurement $`\rho _i=(Q_i^AQ_i^B)\rho (Q_i^AQ_i^B)^{}/p_i`$ is again an isotropic state on $`^{q_i}^{q_i}`$ with fidelity

$$f_i=\left[f\frac{q_i}{d}+\frac{(1f)}{(d^21)}\left(1\frac{q_i}{d}\right)\right]/p_i.$$
(41)
If we now apply the hashing/breeding protocol to the $`b`$ blocks, the obtained rate

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{b}{}}p_i\mathrm{max}[0,\mathrm{log}_2q_iH(\rho _i)]$$
(42)
exceeds $`\mathrm{log}_2dH(\rho )`$ for some values of $`f`$ depending on the dimensions $`\{q_i\}`$ of the subspaces. If the dimensions of the blocks are about the same, then an increasing number of blocks leads to a larger (smaller) rate for small (large) $`f`$. Fig.1 and Fig.2 show the obtained rates for $`d=7`$ and the case where the two parties share 10 pairs of qubits and the overall state is isotropic. For the latter case the rate is already not too far below the relative entropy of entanglement. In fact, the content of the following subsection is to sketch that in the limit of large dimensions $`d\mathrm{}`$ the relative distance between these quantities vanishes for all $`f`$.

### VI.3 The limit of large dimensions

As we have already mentioned, an upper bound for the distillable entanglement is the relative entropy of entanglement, i.e. the minimal distance between $`\rho `$ and a separable state $`\sigma `$ measured in terms of the relative entropy

$$S(\rho ,\sigma )=\mathrm{tr}\left[\rho \mathrm{log}_2\rho \right]\mathrm{tr}\left[\rho \mathrm{log}_2\sigma \right].$$
(43)
For entangled isotropic states the nearest separable state is the isotropic state with $`f=\frac{1}{d}`$ Rainsbound ; VT ; ESym  and the relative entropy of entanglement is thus

$$E_R(\rho )=\mathrm{log}_2d(1f)\mathrm{log}_2(d1)S(f,1f),$$
(44)
for $`f>\frac{1}{d}`$ and zero otherwise, where $`S`$ is again the Shannon entropy. Note that in the limit of large dimensions this becomes after normalization

$$\underset{d\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{E_R(\rho )}{\mathrm{log}_2d}=f.$$
(45)
The same limit, however, appears for the distillation rate obtained with the block projection method described in the previous subsection.

Assume that $`d=2^m`$, i.e. a single state $`\rho `$ consists of $`m`$ pairs of qubits, and let the local measurements have $`m`$ outcomes corresponding to subspaces of equal dimensions $`q_i=2^m/m`$. We can then estimate the probability of success and the achieved fidelity (for $`m(1f)^1`$) by

$`p_i`$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{p}:={\displaystyle \frac{f4^m}{m}},`$ (46)
$`f_i`$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{f}:={\displaystyle \frac{fm}{fm+1}}.`$ (47)
In the limit of large $`m`$, the Eqs.(46, 47) tell us that we gain $`m`$ (almost) maximally entangled states of dimension $`q=2^m/m`$ with probability $`f/m`$. Looking at the normalized entanglement as in Eq.(45) leads then indeed to the same limit as for the relative entropy of entanglement. Hence, we (relatively) approach the distillable entanglement in the limit of large dimensions. However, the main reason for this is, that the relative entanglement difference of two maximally entangled states in $`2^m/m`$ resp. $`2^m`$ dimensions vanishes for $`m\mathrm{}`$. Hence, the result is not as deep as it might seem at first glance.

Nevertheless, projecting onto blocks of lower dimensions can significantly improve the rates yet for finite dimensions as shown in Figs.1,2.

## VII Conclusion

Despite considerable efforts in the theory of entanglement distillation, this field of investigation provides many open questions even on a very basic level. Due to the complexity of the underlying variational problem it is hard to find good upper and lower bounds to the distillable entanglement, not to mention an explicit calculation of this measure of ”useful entanglement“. So far, the most important distillation protocol leading to a non-zero rate, and thus to a non-trivial lower bound to the distillable entanglement, has been adapted to Bell diagonal states of two qubits. Of course, this protocol can also be applied to higher dimensional states by either projecting down to qubits or by interpreting the state as a tensor product of qubits if possible (compare Fig.2). However, both methods will in general discard most of the entanglement.

The present article shows how to generalize the breeding and hashing protocol to higher dimensions. The obtained rates are optimal only for special cases, however, they provide an improved lower bound to the distillable entanglement in general. Both protocols consist out of two steps: first the quantum task is translated to a classical problem and then the latter is solved. The classical part of the protocol is already essentially optimal, however, some information and hence entanglement is lost during the ’translation process’.

We think that the presented results admit further generalizations towards other classes of states and may be also with respect to the restriction of the hashing protocols to dimensions which are (powers of) primes.

We hope that our work initiates further investigations concerning the distillation of entanglement, including explorations of the implications coming from recent works in the field of quantum error correcting codes.

## Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank R.F. Werner , H. Barnum and D. Schlingemann for valuable discussions. Funding by the European Union project EQUIP (contract IST-1999-11053) and financial support from the DFG (Bonn) is gratefully acknowledged.


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# Design of photonic crystal microcavities for cavity QED

## 1 Introduction

A variety of passive and active optical devices can be constructed by introducing point or line defects into a periodic array of holes perforating an optically thin semiconductor slab. In such structures, light is confined within the defect regions by the combined action of distributed Bragg reflection and internal reflection. This technique has been employed in making a microcavity semiconductor (InGaAsP) laser  (emitting at $`\lambda =1.55`$ $`\mu `$m), and for demonstrating Si optical waveguides with sharp bends . One can thus easily envision the fabrication of integrated optical “networks” on a single chip, with numerous microcavity-based active devices linked by passive waveguide interconnects.

The combination of high quality factor and extremely low mode volume that should be obtainable in point-defect microcavities makes the photonic crystal (PC) paradigm especially attractive for experiments in cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) , with potential applications in quantum information technology. The primary focus of this paper will be to discuss the optimization of microcavity designs for cavity QED with strong coupling between defect modes and gas-phase neutral atoms. This new paradigm for cavity QED poses formidable technical challenges with regard to atom trapping and the characterization of surface effects, so we include some discussion of these issues and of our current approaches to addressing them.

In Section II of this article we begin by analyzing elementary microcavities formed by changing either the refractive index or radius of a single defect hole. We discuss in detail some problems in previous FDTD calculations done by our group , as intuitions gained from the resolution of these problems are important in the microcavity design optimization for cavity QED. In Section III we present our designs of microcavities optimized for strong coupling between the cavity field and an atom trapped within a hole of the PC. Based on numerical analysis using the 3D finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, we predict that quality factors over $`3\times 10^4`$ can be achieved in these structures. We also discuss in this section the difficulty of estimating surface interactions between a trapped atom and the semiconductor substrate, and propose a technical strategy for confining gas-phase atoms within a defect microcavity. Finally, in Section IV we describe a procedure that we have developed for microcavity fabrication.

## 2 Single defect hole

The microcavities analyzed in this paper are formed by introducing point defects into a dielectric slab patterned with a hexagonal array of air holes. The thickness of the slab is $`d`$ and its refractive index is equal to $`3.4`$. The spacing between holes is denoted by $`a`$ and the hole radius by $`r`$, as shown in Figure 1. We use $`\lambda `$ to specify the optical wavelength in air. In our calculations of microcavity quality factors, the boundary for separation of vertical from lateral loss (i.e. the vertical quality factor $`Q_{}`$ from the lateral quality factor $`Q_{||}`$) is positioned approximately at $`\lambda /2`$ from the surface of the membrane. As the number of PC layers around a defect is increased, $`Q_{||}`$ increases and the total quality factor $`Q`$ approaches $`Q_{}`$. We will adopt a coordinate convention in which $`x=0`$, $`y=0`$, $`z=0`$ denotes the center of the cavity and $`z=0`$ is the middle plane of the slab.

The simplest method of forming a microcavity within the structure shown in Figure 1 is to change the radius or index of refraction of a single hole. The former method is more interesting from the perspective of fabrication, since the lithographic tuning of geometric parameters of individual holes is a simple process, but in this section we will consider both methods. By increasing the radius of a single hole an acceptor defect state is excited, i.e., pulled into the band-gap from the dielectric band. On the other hand, by decreasing the radius of an individual hole (or by tuning its refractive index between 1 and the refractive index of the slab) a donor defect state is pulled into the band-gap from the air band . Acceptors tend to concentrate their electric field energy density in regions where the larger (semiconductor) refractive index was located in the unperturbed PC, while the electric field energy density of donors is concentrated in regions where there was air in the unperturbed PC. Since the electric field intensity in air regions is small in case of acceptor defects, these are not good candidates for strong coupling with a single gas-phase atom that would be trapped within a hole. In this article we will thus focus on donor states. For a discussion of acceptor states excited in an optically thin slab perforated with a hexagonal PC array, readers are referred to Ref. .

### 2.1 Changing the refractive index of a single hole

Microcavity formation by alteration of the refractive index of a single defect hole in a hexagonal PC has been analyzed previously by our group . In that analysis, we predicted that dipole-like donor states (such as the $`x`$-dipole mode shown in Figure 2) with quality factors up to $`3\times 10^4`$ should exist. We now believe that the quality factors of such microcavities are limited to several thousand, for reasons discussed below. This discussion reveals the extreme sensitivity of microcavity quality factors to small distortions to the local PC geometry, which will later be used as a powerful design tool in optimization for cavity QED.

In our previous work, mirror boundary conditions were applied in the $`x`$, $`y`$ and $`z`$ directions to achieve an eight-fold reduction in the computational grid size. We have since realized that the manner in which even (symmetric) mirror boundary conditions are implemented in our finite-difference time domain (FDTD) code results in numerical output that properly corresponds to an analyzed structure with slight deformations relative to the intended structure. For example, the set of mirror boundary conditions used to select the $`x`$-dipole mode in a defect cavity leads to a deformation of the structure as shown in Figure 3. Holes on the $`x`$-axis (including the defect) are elongated in the $`y`$ direction by 1 point but the distance between holes in $`x`$ and $`y`$ directions is preserved. Because hole-to-hole distances are preserved under this deformation, the half-spaces $`y>1/2`$ and $`y<1/2`$ actually maintain the unperturbed PC geometry when holes in the central row are elongated by $`1/2`$ points in both the $`\pm y`$ directions. The symmetry of the PC surrounding the defect is therefore broken, and this contributes to artificially high quality factors for $`x`$-dipole modes. An even mirror BC was also applied in the $`z`$ direction in our previous analysis, causing a slight error in the thickness of the slab. The correct $`d/a`$ ratios of the structures analyzed in Ref.  would be 0.6, 0.46 and 1, instead the values of 0.53, 0.4 and 0.93, as noted there.

#### 2.1.1 Perfectly symmetric cavity

We re-analyzed the structure with $`r/a=0.3`$, $`d/a=0.6`$, $`n_{defect}=2.4`$, the refractive index of the slab equal to $`n=3.4`$, 5 layers of holes around the defect, and $`a=15`$ grid points. For this set of parameters, the predicted $`Q_{}`$ in Ref.  for the $`x`$-dipole mode was $`3\times 10^4`$. In the present analysis, even mirror boundary conditions were applied to the lower boundary in the $`z`$ direction only, to reduce the computation size by one half and to eliminate TM-like modes. Absorbing boundary conditions were applied to all boundaries in $`x`$ and $`y`$ directions and to the upper boundary in $`z`$ direction. Under these BC’s the intended symmetry of the defect structure was achieved. The initial field distribution was chosen in such a way as to excite $`x`$ or $`y`$ dipole modes selectively. For the $`x`$-dipole mode we now calculate $`Q_{||}=2260`$, $`Q_{}=1730`$ and $`\frac{a}{\lambda }=0.3137`$, and for the $`y`$-dipole mode we calculate $`Q_{||}=1867`$, $`Q_{}=1007`$ and $`\frac{a}{\lambda }=0.3182`$.

The difference between parameters computed for the $`x`$ and $`y`$ dipole modes comes partly from the asymmetry of the structure introduced by imperfect discretization. In a 2D PC with infinite slab thickness, these two modes should be degenerate . In the thin slab however, the $`y`$-dipole mode suffers more vertical scattering at the edges of holes and, therefore, has a lower $`Q_{}`$. For a non-symmetric applied initial field distribution leading to excitation of both $`x`$ and $`y`$ dipole modes, we calculated $`Q_{||}=2070`$, $`Q_{}=1290`$ and $`\frac{a}{\lambda }=0.316`$. This mode can be represented as a superposition of the $`x`$ and $`y`$ dipole, with weighting factors depending on the initial field. Its quality factor and resonant frequency depend on these weighting factors.

#### 2.1.2 Asymmetric cavity

Our explanation for the discrepancy between our current and previous results leads us to ask whether a “real” (intentional) elongation of the central row of holes along the $`y`$-axis may actually improve the quality factor ($`Q`$) of the $`x`$-dipole mode. A possible disadvantage of this approach is the excitation of additional states caused by enlarging holes in the central row. We have therefore analyzed how $`a/\lambda `$ and $`Q`$ of the $`x`$-dipole mode in this structure changes as a function of the elongation parameter $`p`$. Holes on the $`x`$-axis (including the defect) are elongated in both the $`\pm y`$ directions by $`p/2`$ points, in such a way that hole-to-hole distances are preserved and the half-spaces $`y>p/2`$ and $`y<p/2`$ maintain the unperturbed PC geometry. The structure parameters are $`r/a=0.3`$, $`d/a=0.6`$, $`n=3.4`$, $`n_{defect}=2.4`$ and 5 layers of holes surround the defect. The periodicity $`a`$ used in these calculations is equal to $`15`$ grid points, and the elongation step $`\mathrm{\Delta }p=1`$ corresponds to $`a/15`$. The results are shown in Figure 4. It is interesting that the frequency of the mode decreases as $`p`$ increases, even though the amount of low refractive index material increases. However, the net amount of low refractive index material does not matter; what does matter is where the low refractive index is positioned relative to the unperturbed PC. The explanation of the decrease in frequency is very simple, if we recall the $`x`$-dipole mode pattern shown in Figure 2. This is a donor type defect mode, which concentrates its electric field energy density in low refractive index regions of the unperturbed PC. As $`p`$ increases, layers of PC holes are moved away from the defect in $`y`$ direction. For example, the $`n`$-th layer of holes parallel to the $`x`$-axis will be positioned at $`y=\pm na\sqrt{3}/2\pm p/2`$, instead of $`y=\pm na\sqrt{3}/2`$. Therefore, a large refractive index material will be positioned at places where the mode expects to “see” air, leading to a decrease in mode’s frequency. By tuning the mode’s frequency across the band-gap, we can also tune its $`Q`$ factor, as noted previously . For $`p=3`$, $`Q_{}`$ reaches the value of $`20000`$. The analyzed $`x`$-dipole mode mostly resonates in the direction of $`y`$-axis, i.e. in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }X`$ direction of photonic crystal. The tuning of the elongation parameter $`p`$ is, therefore, analogous to tuning of a spacer in the micropost cavity, which leads to tuning of mode’s frequency and $`Q`$ factor. A more detailed explanation of the effect of elongations on $`Q`$ factors is given in the appendix of this article. By increasing the number of PC periods around the defect, the total quality factor $`Q`$ approaches $`Q_{}`$, as shown in Figure 5. It is important to note that $`Q_{||}`$ does not increase exponentially with the number of PC layers around the defect. Instead, it saturates at large number of PC layers. The reason is in the choice of a boundary for separation of $`Q_{}`$ from $`Q_{||}`$, positioned at approximately $`\lambda /2`$ from the surface of the membrane.

From the radiation pattern of the $`x`$-dipole mode, we can see that some portion of the out-of-plane loss (mostly in the $`x`$ direction) still gets collected in $`Q_{||}`$. This loss cannot be suppressed by increasing the number of PC layers around the defect, and it determines the value at which $`Q_{||}`$ saturates. However, much larger out-of-plane loss is collected in $`Q_{}`$, which ultimately determines the total quality factor $`Q`$.
Therefore, a dramatic improvement in $`Q`$ factors of dipole modes over single defect microcavities can be obtained by introducing a novel type of PC lattice defect, consisting of the elongation of holes along the symmetry axes. We call it a fractional edge dislocation, by analogy with edge dislocations in solid state physics. Edge dislocations are formed by introducing extra atomic planes into the crystal lattice. On the other hand, we here insert only fractions of atomic planes along the symmetry axes of photonic crystal.
Unfortunately, at this time, we do not know how to control the refractive index of a single PC hole during the fabrication. For this reason, in the next subsection we will consider alternative methods of forming single defect microcavities, which are much easier to construct by microfabrication.

Even after the elongation of holes on the $`x`$-axis by 1 point, $`Q`$ factors of $`30000`$ were not obtained. This means that the application of mirror BC at $`x=0`$ and $`y=0`$ planes causes additional effects that lead to the overestimation of quality factors. One of the reasons may be that the excited dipole mode does not have a symmetry described by the applied discretized mirror BC’s. This may be partly due to the structure imperfection caused by discretization. In order to avoid problems caused by BC’s all the calculations in this paper were done by applying the even mirror symmetry to $`z=0`$ plane only, in order to select TE-like modes and to reduce the computation size by one half. Absorbing boundary conditions were applied to all boundaries in $`x`$ and $`y`$ directions and to the upper boundary in the $`z`$ direction. To prove that the application of mirror BC at the lower $`z`$ boundary does not change $`Q`$, we also analyzed entire structures with absorbing BC’s applied to all boundaries and obtained the same results as in the analysis of one half of the structure.

### 2.2 Reducing the radius of a single hole

Microcavities analyzed in this subsection are formed by reducing the radius of a single hole to $`r_{def}`$. We calculated parameters of excited dipole modes for a range of microcavity parameters and results are shown in Table 1. For all tabulated results, 5 layers of holes surround the defect and $`a=20`$. Calculated $`Q`$’s are not very impressive, but they do provide us with a good starting point for further optimization. Why did we decide to use a relatively small $`r/a`$ ratio for the PC? According to our calculations, increasing $`r/a`$ within the analyzed range leads to increases in the band gap and reduction of lateral losses. However, vertical scattering at the edges of holes also increases and $`Q_{}`$ drops. It is therefore important to find an optimum $`r/a`$ which leads to small vertical losses but preserves good lateral confinement, in order not to increase the mode volume too much.

The band diagram for TE-like modes of a thin slab ($`n=3.4`$, $`d/a=0.75`$) surrounded by air on both sides and patterned with a hexagonal array of air holes ($`r/a=0.275`$) is shown in Figure 6. These PC parameters are used in most of the calculations in the next section. From the comparison of the dipole mode frequencies tabulated in Table 1 and the band diagram shown in Figure 6, it can be confirmed that as the cavity mode’s frequency approaches the bottom of the air band, vertical losses decrease, but lateral losses increase, which in turn leads to an increase in the mode volume. Our goal in the next section will be to reduce vertical losses and improve $`Q`$ factors even further, while preserving small mode volumes. For this purpose we will explore fractional edge dislocations. In Figure 4, one can observe that an increase in the elongation parameter $`p`$ can be used to tune the $`Q_{}`$ factor of a mode, but also leads to a decrease in the dipole mode’s frequency. This implies that by increasing $`p`$, the mode is pulled deeper into the band gap, away from the air band edge, which leads to its better lateral confinement . Therefore, we can simultaneously achieve a reduction in vertical losses and an improvement in lateral confinement (i.e. an increase in both $`Q_{}`$ and $`Q_{||}`$, and a reduction in the mode volume).

## 3 Cavities for strong coupling

In this section we consider the design of PC microcavities to achieve strong coupling between the cavity field and a single gas-phase atom, that is, an atom located in free space rather than contained as an impurity in the dielectric slab. Our long-term goal is to investigate photonic bandgap structures for single-atom cavity quantum electrodynamics in the strong coupling regime . For this purpose, the microcavity mode quality factor ($`Q`$) has to be as large as possible and the mode volume ($`V_{mode}`$) as small as possible. These two design rules are also followed when designing PC microcavities for semiconductor lasers. However, in a cavity for strong coupling, an atom must be trapped at the point where it interacts most strongly with the cavity field. Therefore, an additional design goal is imposed in this case: the cavity mode should have the E-field intensity as high as possible in the air region. When designing a laser cavity, the problem is opposite: one tends to maximize the overlap between the gain region and the cavity field and, therefore, wants to have the strongest E-field in the semiconductor region.

Mode volume ($`V_{mode}`$), critical atom ($`N_0`$) and photon ($`m_0`$) numbers are defined as follows:

$`V_{mode}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{ϵ(r)|E|^2𝑑V}{max[ϵ(r)|E|^2]}}`$ (1)
$`N_0`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa \gamma _{}}{g^2}}`$ (2)
$`m_0`$ $`=\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma _{}}{2g}}\right)^2,`$ (3)
where $`\kappa `$ is the cavity field decay rate, proportional to the ratio of the angular frequency of the mode ($`\omega _0`$) and the mode quality factor ($`Q`$):

$$\kappa =\frac{\omega _0}{4\pi Q}$$
(4)
$`\gamma _{}`$ is the atomic dipole decay rate ($`2.6`$ MHz for Cesium) and $`g`$ is the coupling parameter at the point where we want to put an atom:

$$g(r)=g_0\frac{ϵ(r)|E|}{max[ϵ(r)|E|]}$$
(5)
$`g_0`$ denotes the vacuum Rabi frequency:

$`g_0`$ $`=\gamma _{}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{V_0}{V_{mode}}}}`$ (6)
$`V_0`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{c\lambda ^2}{8\pi \gamma _{}}}`$ (7)
Strong coupling is possible if both $`N_0`$ and $`m_0`$ are smaller than 1. Therefore, in order to predict whether the strong coupling can occur, we must calculate upper limits of $`N_0`$ and $`m_0`$ and compare them to 1. In other words, it is acceptable if calculated critical numbers are overestimated. As the number of PC layers around the defect increases, the total quality factor $`Q`$ approaches $`Q_{}`$ and $`V_{mode}`$ drops due to the better lateral confinement. Hence, we can calculate $`N_0`$ and $`m_0`$ by assuming $`Q=Q_{}`$ and using $`V_{mode}`$ calculated for 5 PC layers around the defect.
For all calculations in this section, the refractive index of the slab is $`n=3.4`$, 5 layers of holes surround the central hole and $`a=20`$. The elongation step $`\mathrm{\Delta }p=1`$ corresponds to $`a/20`$, i.e. $`5\%`$ of the lattice periodicity $`a`$. The material and PC properties are chosen in such a way that cavities operate at $`\lambda =852`$ nm (the wavelength corresponding to the D2 atomic transition in $`{}_{}{}^{133}Cs`$).

### 3.1 Single defect with fractional edge dislocations

Let us study microcavities formed by reducing the radius of a single hole and simultaneously applying a fractional edge dislocation (of order $`p`$) along the $`x`$-axis. It is important to note that all holes along the $`x`$-axis are elongated in this process, including the defect hole of the reduced radius. We will calculate the dependence of the $`x`$-dipole mode properties on parameter $`p`$. Parameters of the unperturbed PC are: $`r/a=0.275`$, $`d/a=0.75`$, $`a=20`$ and the defect hole radius is $`r_{def}/a=0.2`$. The critical atom ($`N_0`$) and photon ($`m_0`$) numbers are shown as a function of the elongation parameter $`p`$ for the $`x`$-dipole mode in Figure 7. $`V_{mode}`$ does not change significantly with $`p`$ and it is approximately equal to $`0.1(\lambda /2)^3`$ for all structures. When $`p`$ increases, the frequency of the mode moves away from the band edge, towards the center of the band gap, $`Q_{||}`$ increases and $`Q_{}`$ peaks at the value of $`1\times 10^4`$ for $`p=2`$.

From the electric field intensity pattern of the $`x`$-dipole mode shown in Figure 8, one can see that the electric field intensity is very strong within the defect hole. Therefore, an atom trapped there should interact very strongly with the cavity field. From the calculated critical atom and photon numbers, it then should be possible to achieve very strong coupling. At $`\lambda =852nm`$, the parameters of such a cavity are $`r=70nm`$, $`d=190nm`$, $`a=250`$ and $`r_{def}=50nm`$. Due to extremely small mode volumes in these cavities, strong coupling is possible even for moderate values of $`Q`$, as $`Q_{}`$ did not exceed $`1\times 10^4`$ in the parameter range of Fig. 7. Furthermore, $`m_0`$ is much smaller than $`N_0`$, which means that we can try to improve $`Q`$ factors further at the expense of increasing $`V_{mode}`$. $`Q`$ factors above $`1\times 10^4`$ and similar values of $`m_0`$ and $`N_0`$ can also be obtained for the cavity consisting of a single defect with $`r_{def}/a=0.2`$ and a fractional edge dislocation of order $`p`$, produced in the photonic crystal whose parameters are $`r/a=0.3`$, $`d/a=0.65`$ and $`n=3.4`$.

### 3.2 Tuning holes around the defect

Dipole modes are particularly sensitive to the geometry of holes closest to the defect. By tuning these holes, we can induce frequency splitting of dipole modes and dramatically influence their $`Q`$ factors. In Ref. , the variation of two nearest neighbor holes along the $`x`$-axis was analyzed. Here, we will test the influence of changing 4 holes closest to the defect in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }J`$ directions. The analyzed structure is shown in Figure 9. The radius of the central hole is reduced to $`r_2`$ and the radii of the 4 closest holes in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }J`$ directions are reduced to $`r_1`$. These 4 holes are simultaneously moved away from defect, by $`rr_1`$ in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }J`$ directions, which preserves the distance between them and the next nearest neighbors in the same directions. This design will improve the $`Q`$ factor of the $`y`$-dipole mode and spoil the $`Q`$ of the $`x`$-dipole mode. We analyzed structures with various parameters, but our best result was obtained for $`r/a=0.275`$, $`d/a=0.75`$, $`r_2/a=0.2`$, $`r_1/a=0.225`$ and $`a=20`$. The electric field intensity pattern of the excited $`y`$-dipole mode is shown in Figure 10, and its calculated parameters are $`a/\lambda =0.289`$ and $`Q_{}=4890`$. From Table 1 we can see that a dipole mode excited in a single defect microcavity with this $`r_2/a`$, $`r/a`$, $`d/a`$ has $`Q_{}=2078`$. Therefore, the tuning of 4 holes can lead to a substantial increase in $`Q`$ of the $`x`$-dipole mode. The disadvantages of this design include the excitation of defect modes other than dipoles (coming from variation of several holes).

Let us try to improve $`Q`$ of this cavity even further, by also employing the idea of elongation of holes along desired directions. Our mode of choice is the $`y`$-dipole and we will elongate holes sitting on the $`y`$-axis by $`p`$ points in the $`x`$ direction in such a way that the half-spaces $`x>p/2`$ and $`x<p/2`$ remain the unperturbed PC geometry. The dependence of $`N_0`$ (which decreases with $`Q`$) on parameter $`p`$ is shown in Fig. 11. $`V_{mode}`$ does not change significantly with $`p`$ and is in the range between $`0.09(\lambda /2)^3`$ and $`0.12(\lambda /2)^3`$. The calculated $`m_0`$ is around $`510^8`$ for all structures. Again, a very strong coupling is achievable by this design, and we note that $`Q_{}`$ at the point $`p=2`$ achieves a value $`3.3\times 10^4`$.

### 3.3 Atomic physics

Given that microcavities with strong coupling parameters can be designed and fabricated, two further technical issues must be addressed in order to establish the feasibility of cavity QED with neutral atoms in PC’s. First, we must identify a method for stably trapping an individual atom within a hole of the PC. Second, accurate estimates or measurements must be made of the surface interaction between such a trapped atom and the semiconductor substrate. Although definitive solutions to these challenges are the subject of future work, we include in this subsection a brief discussion of each topic.

In addition to the creation of photonic crystals, modern micro-fabrication techniques enable the patterning of either conductive wires or ferromagnetic materials at the micron scale and below. As a result, it should be possible to construct magnetic microtraps with field curvatures $`10^8`$ G/cm<sup>2</sup> . With this magnitude of field curvature an Ioffe trap could hold a Cs atom with Lamb-Dicke parameter $`\eta 0.035`$ in the radial direction, yielding $`\mathrm{\Delta }x10`$ nm in the ground state of the trapping potential and enabling resolved-sideband laser cooling as a means of putting single atoms in the ground state.

We are currently investigating fabrication and laser cooling techniques for an atom-trapping scheme in which micron-scale wires would be deposited on the surface of the PC semiconductor substrate, such that the circular wire pattern of an Ioffe microtrap are arranged concentrically around a defect microcavity. The trap designs discussed in  have sufficiently large inner diameter not to disturb the photonic bandgap structure of the defect cavity. Such a wire arrangement would project a magnetic field with a stable minimum at the geometric center of the microcavity, such that one or more atoms could be confined within the defect hole and would therefore experience strong coupling. A similar geometry could be envisioned for microtraps based on permanent magnets rather than current-carrying wires, which would have significant advantages in terms of heat load to the PC substrate.

A neutral atom trapped within a hole of a PC structure will experience surface (van der Waals) interactions that are quite difficult to estimate. The significance of such interactions is twofold. The sensitive dependence of the ground state energy shift on an atom’s position will lead to mechanical forces that must be compensated by the trap design. Differential shifting of the atomic ground and excited states on the cavity QED transition must also be accounted for, as this will introduce a position-dependent detuning relative to the fixed microcavity resonance. Although van der Waals shifts can be computed for alkali atoms near dielectric or metallic boundaries with simple symmetry , the case of an atom in a PC hole is far more complex. The local geometry seen by a trapped atom will be that of a cylindrical hole with finite extent, and a proper calculation must take into account the overall modification of vacuum modes due to the extended photonic crystal.

Furthermore, the resonant frequencies of many atomic transitions that connect to low-lying states, and therefore contribute strongly to their van der Waals shifts, are above the bandgap of the semiconductor substrate. Such transitions will “see” an absorptive surface while those below the bandgap will see a dielectric surface. This set of factors brings the complexity of the desired calculation well beyond that of existing analytic results in the literature. It should be noted that experimental measurements of the van der Waals shifts in our proposed system would be of significant interest for the general subject of quantum electrodynamics of semiconductors.

We are pursuing a numerical strategy for estimating the magnitude of surface interactions. In a linear response approximation, it should be possible to compute leading-order contributions to the van der Waals shifts from FDTD simulations of the electromagnetic field created by an oscillating dipole source in the photonic crystal structure. While the nature of the code does not allow us to compute directly the backaction of the scattered field on the source dipole, we believe that elementary field theory can be used to relate the simulated field to van der Waals shifts. Our findings will be reported in a forthcoming publication.

### 3.4 Coupled dipole defect modes

The significance of surface effects that could perturb atomic radiative structure within the small defect hole is still unknown. For that reason, we will try to investigate ways of increasing the radius of the hole where the coupling between the atom and the cavity field should occur. Let us now analyze the cavity design where the strong E-field intensity can be achieved in the center of an unperturbed hole. The idea is to use coupling of two dipole defect states. Resonant modes of the microcavity formed by coupling two single defects are presented in Figure 12. Based on the resultant electric field intensity in the central, unperturbed hole, we call them constructively or destructively coupled defect states. They have different frequencies, as well as $`Q`$ factors. We will analyze properties of the constructively coupled state, since the central, unperturbed hole would be a good place for an atom.

We analyzed a series of structures with different parameters. The best results were obtained for two coupled defects with $`r_{def}/a=0.2`$ in a PC with the following parameters: $`d/a=0.75`$, $`r/a=0.275`$, $`n=3.4`$ and $`a=20`$. Holes in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }X`$ direction, in columns containing defects, are elongated by 2 points in the $`x`$ direction. The mode pattern of the constructively coupled defect state is shown in Figure 13. Parameters of the mode are: $`a/\lambda =0.29`$, $`Q_{}=6100`$, $`V_{mode}=0.19(\lambda /2)^3`$, $`m_0=1.510^7`$ and $`N_0=0.0135`$. An atom can now be trapped in the central hole of unperturbed radius. For $`\lambda =852nm`$, this radius is $`r=68nm`$, which is a significant improvement over the previous design, where an atom must be trapped within a $`50nm`$ radius hole. Again, a strong coupling is achievable in this cavity.

An alternative way of forming the coupled defects state is represented in Figure 14. We use the same PC parameters as previously: $`r_{def}/a=0.2`$, $`d/a=0.75`$, $`r/a=0.275`$, $`n=3.4`$ and $`a=20`$. Holes in rows containing defects, are elongated by 2 points in the $`y`$ direction.

The mode pattern of the constructively coupled defect state is shown in Figure 14. Parameters of the mode are: $`a/\lambda =0.288`$, $`Q_{}=12120`$, $`V_{mode}=0.14(\lambda /2)^3`$, $`m_0=1.410^7`$ and $`N_0=0.0063`$. Strong coupling is achievable for an atom trapped in any of the two central holes of the unperturbed radius (positioned between the defects). For $`\lambda =852nm`$, this radius is again $`r=68nm`$.

## 4 Fabrication

We have recently developed the fabrication procedure for making these cavities in $`AlGaAs`$. The material and PC properties are chosen in such a way that cavities operate at $`\lambda =852nm`$ (the wavelength corresponding to the atomic D2 transition in $`{}_{}{}^{133}Cs`$).

The fabrication process starts by spinning of $`100nm`$ thick high molecular weight PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate) on top of the wafer. The PMMA layer is subsequently baked on a hot plate at $`150^oC`$ for 20 minutes. A desired 2D PC pattern is beamwritten on the PMMA by electron beam lithography in a Hitachi S-4500 electron microscope. The exposed PMMA is developed in a 3:7 solution of 2-ethoxyethanol:methanol for 30 seconds. The pattern is then transferred into the $`AlGaAs`$ layer using the $`Cl_2`$ assisted ion beam etching. After that, the sacrificial $`AlAs`$ layer is dissolved in hydrofluoric acid (HF) diluted in water. HF attacks $`AlAs`$ very selectively over $`Al_xGa_{1x}As`$ for $`x<0.4`$ . Therefore, the percentage of $`Al`$ in our $`AlGaAs`$ layer is around $`30\%`$. Finally, the remaining PMMA may be dissolved in acetone.

Three SEM pictures showing top views of fabricated microcavity structures are shown in Figure 15. We are currently working to measure the passive optical properties of such microcavities in order to validate our theoretical predictions.

## 5 Conclusion

In conclusion, we have theoretically demonstrated that PC cavities can be designed for strong interaction with atoms trapped in one of PC holes. At present, we are working on further optimization of the design and the characterization of fabricated structures.

Critical issues for further investigation include efficient coupling of light in and out of the PC microcavity, as well as accurate estimation of surface effects that could perturb atomic radiative structure within the small defect hole. The extremely small mode volume in these structures also poses an interesting theoretical question of how standard cavity QED models must be modified when the single-photon Rabi frequency exceeds the atomic hyperfine spacing.

## 6 Appendix: The effect of fractional edge dislocations

Any wavefront can be considered as a source of secondary waves that add to produce distant wavefronts, according to Huygens principle. Let us assume that we know the field distribution accross the plane $`S`$, positioned in the near field, above the free standing membrane and in parallel to the membrane surface. The far fields can be considered as arising from the equivalent current sheets on this plane. Therefore, we can calculate the far field distribution and the total averaged radiated power into the half-space above the plane $`S`$:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill P& =\frac{\eta }{8\lambda ^2}\underset{0}{\overset{\pi /2}{}}\underset{0}{\overset{2\pi }{}}d_\theta d_\varphi sin(\theta )K(\theta ,\varphi )\hfill \\ \hfill K(\theta ,\varphi )& =\left|N_\theta +\frac{L_\varphi }{\eta }\right|^2+\left|N_\varphi \frac{L_\theta }{\eta }\right|^2\hfill \\ \hfill \eta & =\sqrt{\frac{\mu _o}{ϵ_o}},\hfill \end{array}$$
(8)
where $`\stackrel{}{N}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{L}`$ represent radiation vectors, whose components in the rectangular coordinate system are proportional to Fourier transforms of tangential field components at the plane $`S`$:

$`N_x`$ $`=FT_2(H_y)|_{\stackrel{}{k}_{||}}`$ (9)
$`N_y`$ $`=FT_2(H_x)|_{\stackrel{}{k}_{||}}`$ (10)
$`L_x`$ $`=FT_2(E_y)|_{\stackrel{}{k}_{||}}`$ (11)
$`L_y`$ $`=FT_2(E_x)|_{\stackrel{}{k}_{||}}`$ (12)
$`\stackrel{}{k}_{||}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\lambda }}sin\theta (\widehat{x}cos\varphi +\widehat{y}sin\varphi )`$ (13)
$`FT_2(f(x,y))`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{S}{}}d_xd_yf(x,y)e^{i(k_xx+k_yy)},`$ (14)
Therefore, just by knowing the Fourier transforms of the tangential field components at the plane $`S`$, we can evaluate the time averaged radiated power $`P`$. From the previous expressions it is clear that the wave-vector of interest $`\stackrel{}{k}_{||}`$ lies within the light cone for any values of angles $`\theta `$ and $`\varphi `$ in the circular polar coordinate system (i.e. $`|\stackrel{}{k}_{||}|\frac{2\pi }{\lambda }`$). This implies that the radiated power $`P`$ depends only on the wave-vector components located within the light cone. It is also clear that by suppressing the Fourier components within the light cone, one can reduce $`P`$. Having in mind that for the $`x`$-dipole mode $`E_y`$ and $`H_x`$ fields are odd with respect to both $`x`$ and $`y`$ symmetry axes, $`N_y`$ and $`L_x`$ do not contribute significantly to the integral in expression 8 (they are both equal to zero at any point in the k-space with either $`k_x`$ or $`k_y`$ equal to zero). On the other hand, $`E_x`$ and $`H_y`$ field components are even with respect to both $`x`$ and $`y`$ axes and their Fourier transforms are generally non-zero at small wave-vector values. However, by tuning the elongation factor $`p`$, one can balance the energy in the positive and negative field lobes and minimize the Fourier components of $`E_x`$ and $`B_y`$ within the light cone. This also leads to a decrease in the radiated power $`P`$. We can conclude that the improvement in the $`Q`$ factor after the application of fractional edge dislocations is due to the suppression of the wave-vector components composing the defect mode, which are located within the light cone. A more detailed explanation of this phenomenon and how it can be used to improve $`Q`$ factors of other types of modes will be presented in our forthcoming publication.
The $`Q`$ factor of a mode can be expressed as $`Q=\omega \frac{W}{P}`$, where $`W`$ is the total energy of a mode in the half-space $`z0`$. The comparison between the $`Q`$ factor calculated using the method presented in this appendix, and $`Q_{}`$ previously estimated using the FDTD, for the structure from the subsection 2.1.2, is shown in Figure 16. The plane $`S`$ is positioned directly above the surface of the membrane in this case. From Figure 5 it follows that the total $`Q`$ factor saturates at about $`17000`$, when the number of PC layers around the defect increases in the structure with $`p=3`$. This is very close to the maximum $`Q`$ value estimated from the expression 8.

Acknowledgement
This work has been supported by the Caltech MURI Center for Quantum Networks.