Large-scale multipartite entanglement in the quantum optical frequency comb of a depleted-pump optical parametric oscillator

We show theoretically that multipartite entanglement is generated on a massive scale in the spectrum, or optical frequency comb, of a single optical parametric oscillator (OPO) emitting well above threshold. In this system, the quantum dynamics of the strongly depleted pump field are responsible for the onset of the entanglement by correlating the two-mode squeezed, bipartite-entangled pairs of OPO signal fields. (Such pairs are independent of one another in the undepleted, classical pump approximation.) We verify the multipartite nature of the entanglement by evaluating the van Loock-Furusawa criterion for a particular set of entanglement witnesses deduced from physical considerations.