Experimental characterization of entanglement dynamics in noisy channels

The dynamics of entanglement between two photons with one of them passing through noisy quantum channels is characterized. It is described by a simple factorization law which was first theoretically proposed by Konrad {\it et al.} [Nature Phys., 4, 99 (2008)]. Quantum state tomography process is employed to reconstruct the reduced density matrixes of the final states and the corresponding concurrences are calculated. Good fittings between experimental results and theoretical predictions are found, which imply the validity of the general factorization law in the characterization of entanglement dynamics.