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arXiv:2103.08689 · Optics Letters

Full-mode characterization of correlated photon pairs generated in spontaneous downconversion

Alessio D’Errico, Felix Hufnagel, Filippo Miatto, Mohammadreza Rezaee, Ebrahim Karimi

Published Apr 19, 2021• 21 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Spontaneous parametric downconversion is the primary source to generate entangled photon pairs in quantum photonics laboratories. Depending on the experimental design, the generated photon pairs can be correlated in the frequency spectrum, polarization, position-momentum, and spatial modes. Exploring the spatial modes' correlation has hitherto been limited to the polar coordinates' azimuthal angle, and a few attempts to study Walsh mode's radial states. Here, we study the full-mode correlation, on a Laguerre-Gauss basis, between photon pairs generated in a type-I crystal. Furthermore, we explore the effect of a structured pump beam possessing different spatial modes onto bi-photon spatial correlation. Finally, we use the capability to project over arbitrary spatial mode superpositions to perform the bi-photon state's full quantum tomography in a 16-dimensional subspace.

DOI
10.1364/ol.424619

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Spontaneous parametric downconversion is the primary source to generate entangled photon pairs in quantum photonics laboratories. Depending on the experimental design, the generated photon pairs can be correlated in the frequency spectrum, polarization, position-momentum, and spatial modes. Exploring the spatial modes' correlation has hitherto been limited to the polar coordinates' azimuthal angle, and a few attempts to study Walsh mode's radial states. Here, we study the full-mode correlation, on a Laguerre-Gauss basis, between photon pairs generated in a type-I crystal. Furthermore, we explore the effect of a structured pump beam possessing different spatial modes onto bi-photon spatial correlation. Finally, we use the capability to project over arbitrary spatial mode superpositions to perform the bi-photon state's full quantum tomography in a 16-dimensional subspace.
Spatially entangled light has proven to be a critical resource in high-dimensional quantum information applications such as quantum cryptography, quantum sensing, and quantum computing. However, progress in the generation of arbitrary spatially entangled states for these protocols via spontaneous parametric down-conversion has been hindered due to the complex relationship between the nonlinear coupling and the generated quantum state. Here, we employ an inverse-design algorithm for the generation of non-trivial maximally entangled bi-photon qubit and qutrit states in the azimuthal index via spontaneous parametric down-conversion. These states are obtained by shaping the pump spatial distribution as a superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian radial modes. The generated bi-photon states are experimentally characterized through quantum state tomography, with their entanglement verified by breaking generalized Bell inequalities. Finally, we performed a proof-of-principle experiment demonstrating the potential utility of the inverse-designed states in entanglement-based quantum key distribution protocols, measuring quantum error rates of 3.95% and 7.03% for the generated qubit and qutrit states, respectively. Our results validate the inverse-design model in a free-space optical setup and pave the way for high-dimensional spatial-mode entangled state design and generation for quantum network applications.
Abstract We experimentally demonstrate the quantum entanglement in various spatial modes of the correlated photons generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a type-II phase-matched periodically-poled KTP crystal. The two-fold coincidence measurement reveals the spatial entanglement between the photon pairs by projecting one of the correlated photons onto a Gaussian mode while scanning the spatial mode of its partner photon through selective projection (Gaussian, Laguerre–Gaussian (LG), Bessel-Gaussian (BG), and Airy–Gaussian (AG)) using a spatial light modulator (SLM). We also show the spatially resolved measurement of the non-conservation of orbital angular momentum via modal decomposition of the correlated photon in LG and BG bases.
We present two projects that exploit symmetry to produce and measure photon pairs. In the first project, we propose a method for directly producing radially and azimuthally polarized photon pairs through spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC). This method constitutes a novel geometry for SPDC in which a radially polarized Bessel-Gauss pump beam is directed into a nonlinear crystal, with the central propagation direction parallel to the crystal axis. We model and plot the spatial and polarization distributions for Type-I and Type-II phasematching. In the second project, we demonstrate experimentally a method to measure the polarization state of single photons through direct measurements performed on optimal quantum clones. We produce these optimal quantum clones on a non-polarizing beam splitter and interfere the outputs of this beam splitter in a displaced Sagnac interferometer. By performing orthogonal polarization measurements on these two photons, we reconstruct the density matrix for input states H and R.
The spontaneous parametric down-conversion of photons has been widely applied for generating entangled photon pairs. We theoretically explore the entangled down-converted state of the photon pair, also known as biphoton state, for both degenerate and nondegenerate photon pairs. In particular, the spatial structure of the biphoton state has been expressed in Bessel modes to better understand the correlation with regard to the opening angle ${\ensuremath{\vartheta}}_{k}$ of Bessel modes. In fact, the opening angles of the down-converted photon pair are not independent of each other, but rather are correlated. Furthermore, we confirm the experimentally observed conditions concerning the optimization of generating high-degree spatial entanglement by controlling the beam waist of the pump beam. We also introduce a new experimental setup for efficient measurement of the spatial entanglement of the biphoton state using geometrical optics arguments.
Photon pairs generated from spontaneous parametric down-conversion are a well-established method to realize entangled bipartite photonic systems. Laguerre-Gaussian modes, which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), are commonly exploited to engineer high-dimensional entangled quantum states. For Hilbert spaces with dimension d>2d>2d>2, maximally entangled states (MESs) help to improve the capacity and security of quantum communication protocols, among several other promising features. However, the direct generation of MESs in well-defined high-dimensional subspaces of the infinite OAM basis has remained a challenge. Here, we formalize how the spatial distribution of the pump beam and the nonlinear profile of the crystal can be simultaneously utilized to generate MESs without additional spatial filtering of OAM modes within a subspace. We illustrate our approach with maximally entangled qutrits (d=3)(d=3)(d=3) and ququints (d=5)(d=5)(d=5).
High-dimensional spatial entanglement generated via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) provides a powerful resource for quantum information processing, yet its mode structure becomes increasingly complex when the pump occupies a higher-order Laguerre--Gaussian (LG) mode. Here, we develop an algebraic framework for characterizing biphoton spatial-mode entanglement by factorizing LG-pumped SPDC into a spatial-mode beam-splitter transformation followed by spatial two-mode squeezing. By choosing the biphoton LG basis radius as the geometric mean of the pump-beam radius and the crystal-induced correlation width, we obtain a natural modal basis in which the two operations can be treated separately. When the pump-beam radius matches the correlation width, spatial squeezing vanishes, and the two circular-mode components of the pump are independently conserved across the signal and idler photons, leading to conservation of both orbital angular momentum and the total spatial mode number. We further derive an analytical expression for the Schmidt number for arbitrary LG pump modes and squeezing strengths, revealing how the radial and azimuthal pump indices govern the dimensionality of the spatial entanglement. This algebraic characterization provides a unified description of the mode structure, conservation laws, and entanglement dimensionality of higher-order-LG-pumped SPDC.