We present a scheme to measure the spectrum of orbital angular momenta of light using a precisely timed optical loop and quantum non-demolition measurements. We also discuss the influence of imperfect optical components.
The orbital angular momentum of light (OAM) is a fundamental property of light. Beams with OAM have a helical wave front that carries quantized orbital angular momentum L hbar per photon, where L is any integer. This unbounded Hilbert space can increase information capacity of both classical and quantum communications and also improve and extend qubit and qudit quantum algorithms. Additionally, the use of the OAM modes allows for novel imaging techniques to directly observe and measure various topological properties of objects ranging from defects in semiconductors to rotating black holes and extrasolar planets. However, measuring such higher dimensional OAM states is fundamentally important, albeit challenging, in order to use this rich degree of freedom. In the work that follows, I present two novel OAM to time mapping schemes and an application using the higher dimensionality of OAM to non-destructively probe quantum states. These are the first OAM measuring schemes to use the temporal degree of freedom to measure OAM. The use of the novel loop nature allows for high fidelity and high speed measurements of a large number of OAM states without significant increase in experimental resources. The first scheme experimentally demonstrates a compact and practical device to measure the OAM spectrum. I report a fidelity of -21.3 dB for 5 different OAM states. The second scheme extends the first, but uses non-demolition measurements to iteratively test for specific OAM values. While this increases experimental complexity, it allows for the detection of an arbitrarily large OAM value from a single photon. I also discuss details of each technique investigate the affects of misalignment on the OAM spectrum. In the remaining part, I discuss my novel generalized quantum Zeno interrogation. The original quantum Zeno interrogation is limited to the two-dimensional state of a single object; while the generalized version has the ability to non-destructively probe the quantum state a set of objects, and deterministically imprint that information onto a single photon using the OAM degree of freedom.
Abstract. We demonstrate high-fidelity detection of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light using a compact and practical OAM spectrometer that maps the OAM spectrum to time. The spectrometer consists of a single optical delay loop to achieve timing mapping, a vortex phase plate that iteratively decreases the OAM value, and a single mode fibre to distinguish zero from non-zero OAM states. Light with arbitrarily OAM compositions can be measured. For light with OAM up to 4~, we measured an average crosstalk of-21.3 dB, which is mainly limited by the purity of the input states and optical alignment. ar X iv
We demonstrate high-fidelity detection of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light using a compact and practical OAM spectrometer that maps the OAM spectrum to time. The spectrometer consists of a single optical delay loop to achieve timing mapping, a vortex phase plate that iteratively decreases the OAM value and a single mode fiber to distinguish zero from non-zero OAM states. Light with arbitrarily OAM compositions can be measured. For light with OAM up to 4ℏ, we measured an average crosstalk of −21.3 dB, which is mainly limited by the purity of the input states and optical alignment.