We have measured the complete probability distribution of the orbital angular momentum modes that are generated in spontaneous parametric down conversion. We show how on-purpose phase mismatching increases the spiral bandwidth and flattens the modal distribution.
We implement an interferometric method to measure the orbital angular momentum (OAM) spectrum of photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. In contrast with previous experiments, which were all limited by the modal capacity of the detection system, our method operates on the entire down-conversion cone and reveals the complete distribution of the generated OAM. In this geometry, new features can be studied. We show that the phase-matching conditions can be used as a tool to enhance the azimuthal Schmidt number and to flatten the spectral profile, allowing the efficient production of high-quality multidimensional entangled states.
Photon pairs entangled in high-dimensional orbital angular momentum (OAM) degrees of freedom (DOF) have been widely regarded as a possible source for improving the capacity of quantum information processing. The generation of a high-dimensional maximally entangled state in the OAM DOF is therefore much desired. In this work, we demonstrate a simple method to generate a broader and flatter OAM spectrum, i.e., a larger spiral bandwidth (SB), of entangled photon pairs generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion by modifying the pump beam profile. By investigating both experimentally and theoretically, we find that an exponential pump profile that is roughly the inverse of the mode profiles of the single-mode fibers used for OAM detection will provide a much larger SB compared to a Gaussian-shaped pump.
The bandwidth of any communication system, classical or quantum, is limited by the number of orthogonal states in which the information can be encoded. Quantum key distribution systems available commercially rely on the two-dimensional polarisation state of photons. Quantum computation has also been largely designed on the basis of qubits. However, a photon is endowed with other degrees of freedom, such as orbital angular momentum (OAM). OAM is an attractive basis to be used for quantum information because it is discrete and theoretically infinite-dimensional. This promises a higher information capacity per photon which can lead to more complex quantum computation protocols and more security and robustness for quantum cryptography. Entanglement of OAM naturally arises from spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). However, any practical experiment utilising the innately high-dimensional entanglement of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) state space of photons is subject to the modal capacity of the detection system. Only a finite subset of this space is accessible experimentally. Given such a constraint, we show that the number of measured, entangled OAM modes in photon pairs generated by SPDC can be increased by tuning the phase-matching conditions in the SPDC process. We achieve this by tuning the orientation angle of the nonlinear crystal generating the entangled photons.
Spontaneous parametric down-conversion has been shown to be a reliable source of entangled photons. Among the wide range of properties shown to be entangled, it is the orbital angular momentum that is the focus of our study. We investigate, in particular, the bi-photon state generated using a Gaussian pump beam. We derive an expression for the simultaneous correlations in the orbital angular momentum, $\ensuremath{\ell}$, and radial momentum, p, of the down-converted Laguerre-Gaussian beams. Our result allows us, for example, to calculate the spiral bandwidth with no restriction on the geometry of the beams: $\ensuremath{\ell}$, p, and the beam widths are all free parameters. Moreover, we show that, with the usual paraxial and collinear approximations, a fully analytic expression for the correlations can be derived.