Generation of tripartite entanglement from cascaded four-wave mixing processes

We investigate the possibility of an experimentally feasible cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) system [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 023602 (2014)] to generate tripartite entanglement. We verify that genuine tripartite entanglement is present in this system by calculating the covariances of three output beams and then considering the violations of the inequalities of the three-mode entanglement criteria, such as two-condition criterion, single-condition criterion, optimal single-condition criterion and the positivity under partial transposition (PPT) criterion. We also consider the possibilities of the bipartite entanglement of any pair of the three output beams using the Duan-Giedke-Cirac-Zoller criterion and PPT criterion. We find that the tripartite entanglement and the bipartite entanglement for the two pairs are present in the whole gain region. The entanglement characteristics under different entanglement criteria are also considered. Our results pave the way for the realization and application of multipartite entanglement based on the cascaded FWM processes.