We report the first experimental generation and characterization of a six-photon Dicke state. The produced state shows a fidelity of F=0.56+/-0.02 with respect to an ideal Dicke state and violates a witness detecting genuine six-qubit entanglement by four standard deviations. We confirm characteristic Dicke properties of our resource and demonstrate its versatility by projecting out four- and five-photon Dicke states, as well as four-photon GHZ and W states. We also show that Dicke states have interesting applications in multiparty quantum networking protocols such as open-destination teleportation, telecloning and quantum secret sharing.
@article{arxiv.0903.2212,
title = {Experimental realization of Dicke states of up to six qubits for multiparty quantum networking},
author = {R. Prevedel and G. Cronenberg and M. S. Tame and M. Paternostro and P. Walther and M. S. Kim and A. Zeilinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0903.2212},
year = {2013}
}