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arXiv:2402.11046

Generation of heralded vector-polarized single photons in remotely controlled topological classes

Samuel Corona-Aquino, Zeferino Ibarra-Borja, Omar Calderón-Losada, Bruno Piccirillo, Verónica Vicuña-Hernández, Tonatiuh Moctezuma-Quistian, Héctor Cruz-Ramírez, Dorilian Lopez-Mago, Alfred B. U’Ren

Published Feb 16, 2024• 0 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as Vector Vortex and Full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q-plate device which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as pump in a spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single photon transfer of the intensity/phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single photon transfer. We show that this non-local control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to new opportunities in photons-based quantum information processing science.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2402.11046

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We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as Vector Vortex and Full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q-plate device which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as pump in a spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single photon transfer of the intensity/phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single photon transfer. We show that this non-local control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to new opportunities in photons-based quantum information processing science.
We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as vector vortex and full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q -plate device, which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as a pump in a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single-photon transfer of the intensity and phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single-photon transfer. We show that this nonlocal control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to opportunities in photon-based quantum information processing science. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Polarization structured heralded single photons have been generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a type-I dual crystal pumped by an inhomogeneously polarized beam in a general Poincaré mode, i.e. an inseparable superposition of two orthogonally polarized states through two orthogonal orbital angular momentum modes. The polarization structure of the signal photons can be controlled by manipulating the polarization state of their idler photon sisters with zero orbital angular. Due to the separate conservations of spin and orbital angular momenta in a type-I dual crystal SPDC process, any projection of the idler polarization state turns into a unitary transformation of the polarization basis of the signal photons, while preserving the orbital angular momentum modes originally included in the pump. We demonstrate, in this way, the ability to toggle between direct and basis-switched pump-single photon transfer by selectively projecting the polarization of the heralding photon before detection.
We show that an optical vortex beam, implemented classically, can be transferred to the transverse amplitude of a heralded single photon. For this purpose we have relied on the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) for the generation of signal and idler photon pairs, using a pump in the form of a Bessel-Gauss (BG) beam with orbital angular momentum (specifically, with topological charge l = 1 and l = 2). We have designed our source so that it operates within the short SPDC crystal regime for which, the amplitude and phase of the pump may be transferred to a heralded single photon. In order to verify the vortex nature of our heralded single photon, we have shown that the conditional angular spectrum and the transverse intensity at the single-photon level match similar measurements carried out for the pump. In addition, we have shown that when our heralded single photon is diffracted through a triangular aperture, the far-field single-photon transverse intensity exhibits the expected triangular arrangement of intensity lobes associated with the presence of orbital angular momentum.
We present a source of near-infrared photon pairs based on the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC), for which the joint signal-idler quantum state is designed to be factorable in the frequency-time and in the transverse position-momentum degrees of freedom. Our technique is based on the use of a broadband pump and vector group velocity matching between the pump, signal, and idler waves. We show experimentally that a source based on this technique can be configured for the generation of: i) pure heralded single photons, and ii) polarization-entangled photon pairs which are free from spectral correlations, in both cases without resorting to spectral filtering. While critical for many applications in optical quantum information processing, such a source has not previously been demonstrated.
Optical vortex beams are profiled as helical wavefronts with a phase singularity carrying an orbital angular momentum (OAM) associated with their spatial distribution. The transverse intensity distribution of a conventional optical vortex has a strong dependence on the carried topological charge. However, perfect optical vortex (POV) beams have their transverse intensity distribution independent of their charge. Such “size-invariant” POV beams have found exciting applications in optical manipulation, imaging, and communication. In this paper, we investigate the use of POV modes in the efficient generation of high-dimensional quantum states of light. We generate heralded single photons carrying OAM using spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) of POV beams. We show that the heralding efficiency of the SPDC single photons generated with a POV pump is greater than that with normal optical vortex beams. The dimensionality of the two-photon OAM states is increased with POV modes in the pump and projective measurements using Bessel–Gaussian vortex modes that give POV, instead of Laguerre–Gaussian modes.
Abstract Metasurfaces utilize engineered nanostructures to achieve control on all possible dimensions of light, encouraging versatile applications, including beam steering, multifunctional lensing, and multiplexed holograms. Towards the quantum optical regime for metasurfaces, although significant efforts have been put into generating and analyzing specific quantum states, control schemes to further manipulate these quantum states or information are still limited. Here, based on a metasurface, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a continuous heralding scheme to remotely control a vortex beam with high robustness to noise using polarization-entangled photon pairs. Our metasurface entangles polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM) and the polarization selection on heralding photon erases the which-OAM information on signal photon. It induces an interference of two different OAM states remotely, manifesting a continuous orbital rotation. Our results show that metasurfaces have potential applications in quantum communication and information processing in entangling information with increasing complexity in the content.