Engineering single-photon states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a powerful toolfor quantum information photonic implementations. Indeed, due to its unbounded nature, OAM is suitable forencoding qudits,...Engineering single-photon states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a powerful toolfor quantum information photonic implementations. Indeed, due to its unbounded nature, OAM is suitable forencoding qudits, allowing a single carrier to transport a large amount of information. Most of the experimentalplatforms employ spontaneous parametric down-conversion processes to generate single photons, evenif this approach is intrinsically probabilistic, leading to scalability issues for an increasing number of qudits.Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have been used to get over these limitations by producing on-demand pure and indistinguishable single-photon states, although only recently they have been exploitedto create OAM modes. Our work employs a bright QD single-photon source to generate a complete set ofquantum states for information processing with OAM-endowed photons. We first study hybrid intraparticleentanglement between OAM and polarization degrees of freedom of a single photon whose preparationwas certified by means of Hong–Ou–Mandel visibility. Then, we investigate hybrid interparticle OAM-based entanglement by exploiting a probabilistic entangling gate. The performance of our approach isassessed by performing quantum state tomography and violating Bell inequalities. Our results pave theway for the use of deterministic sources for the on-demand generation of photonic high-dimensionalquantum states.展开更多
Scattering phenomena affect light propagation through any kind of medium from free space to biological tissues.Finding appropriate strategies to increase the robustness to scattering is the common requirement in devel...Scattering phenomena affect light propagation through any kind of medium from free space to biological tissues.Finding appropriate strategies to increase the robustness to scattering is the common requirement in developing both communication protocols and imaging systems.Recently,structured light has attracted attention due to its seeming scattering resistance in terms of transmissivity and spatial behavior.Moreover,correlation between optical polarization and orbital angular momentum(OAM),which characterizes the so-called vector vortex beams(VVBs)states,seems to allow for the preservation of the polarization pattern.We extend the analysis by investigating both the spatial features and the polarization structure of vectorial optical vortexes propagating in scattering media with different concentrations.Among the observed features,we find a sudden swift decrease in contrast ratio for Gaussian,OAM,and VVB modes for concentrations of the adopted scattering media exceeding 0.09%.Our analysis provides a more general and complete study on the propagation of structured light in dispersive and scattering media.展开更多
Experimental engineering of high-dimensional quantum states is a crucial task for several quantum information protocols.However,a high degree of precision in the characterization of the noisy experimental apparatus is...Experimental engineering of high-dimensional quantum states is a crucial task for several quantum information protocols.However,a high degree of precision in the characterization of the noisy experimental apparatus is required to apply existing quantum-state engineering protocols.This is often lacking in practical scenarios,affecting the quality of the engineered states.We implement,experimentally,an automated adaptive optimization protocol to engineer photonic orbital angular momentum(OAM)states.The protocol,given a target output state,performs an online estimation of the quality of the currently produced states,relying on output measurement statistics,and determines how to tune the experimental parameters to optimize the state generation.To achieve this,the algorithm does not need to be imbued with a description of the generation apparatus itself.Rather,it operates in a fully black-box scenario,making the scheme applicable in a wide variety of circumstances.The handles controlled by the algorithm are the rotation angles of a series of waveplates and can be used to probabilistically generate arbitrary four-dimensional OAM states.We showcase our scheme on different target states both in classical and quantum regimes and prove its robustness to external perturbations on the control parameters.This approach represents a powerful tool for automated optimizations of noisy experimental tasks for quantum information protocols and technologies.展开更多
基金This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the PHOQUSING Project GA No.899544the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme QUDOT-TECH under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No.86109.
文摘Engineering single-photon states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a powerful toolfor quantum information photonic implementations. Indeed, due to its unbounded nature, OAM is suitable forencoding qudits, allowing a single carrier to transport a large amount of information. Most of the experimentalplatforms employ spontaneous parametric down-conversion processes to generate single photons, evenif this approach is intrinsically probabilistic, leading to scalability issues for an increasing number of qudits.Semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have been used to get over these limitations by producing on-demand pure and indistinguishable single-photon states, although only recently they have been exploitedto create OAM modes. Our work employs a bright QD single-photon source to generate a complete set ofquantum states for information processing with OAM-endowed photons. We first study hybrid intraparticleentanglement between OAM and polarization degrees of freedom of a single photon whose preparationwas certified by means of Hong–Ou–Mandel visibility. Then, we investigate hybrid interparticle OAM-based entanglement by exploiting a probabilistic entangling gate. The performance of our approach isassessed by performing quantum state tomography and violating Bell inequalities. Our results pave theway for the use of deterministic sources for the on-demand generation of photonic high-dimensionalquantum states.
基金This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program(Future and Emerging Technologies)under Grant Agreement No.828978.
文摘Scattering phenomena affect light propagation through any kind of medium from free space to biological tissues.Finding appropriate strategies to increase the robustness to scattering is the common requirement in developing both communication protocols and imaging systems.Recently,structured light has attracted attention due to its seeming scattering resistance in terms of transmissivity and spatial behavior.Moreover,correlation between optical polarization and orbital angular momentum(OAM),which characterizes the so-called vector vortex beams(VVBs)states,seems to allow for the preservation of the polarization pattern.We extend the analysis by investigating both the spatial features and the polarization structure of vectorial optical vortexes propagating in scattering media with different concentrations.Among the observed features,we find a sudden swift decrease in contrast ratio for Gaussian,OAM,and VVB modes for concentrations of the adopted scattering media exceeding 0.09%.Our analysis provides a more general and complete study on the propagation of structured light in dispersive and scattering media.
基金the support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program(Future and Emerging Technologies)through project TEQ(Grant No.766900)QU-BOSS-ERC Advanced Grant(Grant No.884676),the QUSHIP PRIN 2017(Grant No.2017SRNBRK)+3 种基金the DfE-SFI Investigator Program(Grant No.15/IA/2864)COST Action CA15220,the Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellowship(No.RSWF\R3\183013)the Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant(Grant No.RGP-2018-266)the UK EPSRC(Grant No.EP/T028106/1).
文摘Experimental engineering of high-dimensional quantum states is a crucial task for several quantum information protocols.However,a high degree of precision in the characterization of the noisy experimental apparatus is required to apply existing quantum-state engineering protocols.This is often lacking in practical scenarios,affecting the quality of the engineered states.We implement,experimentally,an automated adaptive optimization protocol to engineer photonic orbital angular momentum(OAM)states.The protocol,given a target output state,performs an online estimation of the quality of the currently produced states,relying on output measurement statistics,and determines how to tune the experimental parameters to optimize the state generation.To achieve this,the algorithm does not need to be imbued with a description of the generation apparatus itself.Rather,it operates in a fully black-box scenario,making the scheme applicable in a wide variety of circumstances.The handles controlled by the algorithm are the rotation angles of a series of waveplates and can be used to probabilistically generate arbitrary four-dimensional OAM states.We showcase our scheme on different target states both in classical and quantum regimes and prove its robustness to external perturbations on the control parameters.This approach represents a powerful tool for automated optimizations of noisy experimental tasks for quantum information protocols and technologies.
