Continuous variable systems: Entanglement, decoherence and quantum cryptography

Abstract

This article aims to review some aspects of quantum information processing (QIP) using continuous variable systems for one and two-modes. The objective of the article is to convey a flavor of the kind of developments which has taken place in this subfield of QIP in the past decade and not to write a comprehensive review of the field. We hence focus on Gaussian states, their entanglement and their utilization in various quantum cryptographic protocols that have been proposed and recently implemented.