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Science

Entangling the Spatial Properties of Laser Beams

K. Wagner, Jiří Janoušek, V. Delaubert, Hongxin Zou, C. C. Harb, Nicolas Treps, Jean François Morizur, Ping Koy Lam, Hans‐A. Bachor

Published Jul 24, 2008• 87 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Position and momentum were the first pair of conjugate observables explicitly used to illustrate the intricacy of quantum mechanics. We have extended position and momentum entanglement to bright optical beams. Applications in optical metrology and interferometry require the continuous measurement of laser beams, with the accuracy fundamentally limited by the uncertainty principle. Techniques based on spatial entanglement of the beams could overcome this limit, and high-quality entanglement is required. We report a value of 0.51 for inseparability and 0.62 for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen criterion, both normalized to a classical limit of 1. These results are a conclusive optical demonstration of macroscopic position and momentum quantum entanglement and also confirm that the resources for spatial multimode protocols are available.

DOI
10.1126/science.1159663

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Position and momentum were the first pair of conjugate observables explicitly used to illustrate the intricacy of quantum mechanics. We have extended position and momentum entanglement to bright optical beams. Applications in optical metrology and interferometry require the continuous measurement of laser beams, with the accuracy fundamentally limited by the uncertainty principle. Techniques based on spatial entanglement of the beams could overcome this limit, and high-quality entanglement is required. We report a value of 0.51 for inseparability and 0.62 for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen criterion, both normalized to a classical limit of 1. These results are a conclusive optical demonstration of macroscopic position and momentum quantum entanglement and also confirm that the resources for spatial multimode protocols are available.
We present the latest results on the experimental generation of the position and momentum (x-p) entanglement for bright optical beams [1]. Spatial entanglement of light is a direct demonstration of entanglement of the momentum and position of laser beam as envisioned in the original publication by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [2]. Spatial entanglement has potential applications in quantum imaging systems and for quantum communication protocols. The position-momentum entanglement was observed in the form of the degree of inseparability, which was measured to be no larger than 0.76.
A light beam is said to be position squeezed if its position can be determined to an accuracy beyond the standard quantum limit. We identify the position and momentum observables for bright optical beams and show that position and momentum entanglement can be generated by interfering two position, or momentum, squeezed beams on a beam splitter. The position and momentum measurements of these beams can be performed using a homodyne detector with local oscillator of an appropriate transverse beam profile. We compare this form of spatial entanglement with split detection-based spatial entanglement.
Abstract Spatial entanglement is at the heart of quantum enhanced imaging applications and high-dimensional quantum information protocols. In particular, for imaging and sensing applications, quantum states with a macroscopic number of photons are needed to provide a real advantage over the classical state-of-the-art. We demonstrate the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox in its original position and momentum form with bright twin beams of light by showing the presence of EPR spatial (position–momentum) entanglement. An electron-multiplying charge-coupled-device camera is used to record images of the bright twin beams in the near and far field regimes to achieve an apparent violation of the uncertainty principle by more than an order of magnitude, which remains statistically significant even in the limit of a small number of images. We further show that the presence of quantum correlations in the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom leads to spatial squeezing of the bright twin beams in both the near and far fields. This provides another verification of the spatial entanglement and points to the presence of hyperentanglement in the bright twin beams.
Results of experiments recently performed are reported, in which two optical parametric amplifiers were set up to generate two independently quadrature squeezed continuous wave laser beams. The transformation of quadrature squeezed states into polarization squeezed states and into states with spatial quantum correlations is demonstrated. By utilizing two squeezed laser beams, a polarization squeezed state exhibiting three simultaneously squeezed Stokes operator variances was generated. Continuous variable polarization entanglement was generated and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox was observed. A pair of Stokes operators satisfied both the inseparability criterion and the conditional variance criterion. Values of 0.49 and 0.77, respectively, were observed, with entanglement requiring values below unity. The inseparability measure of the observed quadrature entanglement was 0.44. This value is sufficient for a demonstration of quantum teleportation, which is the next experimental goal of the authors.
As is well known, angular position and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons are a conjugate pair of variables that have been extensively explored for quantum information science and technology. In contrast, the radial degrees of freedom remain relatively unexplored. Here we exploit the radial variables, i.e., radial position and radial momentum, to demonstrate Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations between down-converted photons. In our experiment, we prepare various annular apertures to define the radial positions and use eigenmode projection to measure the radial momenta. The resulting correlations are found to violate the Heisenberg-like uncertainty principle for independent particles, thus manifesting the entangled feature in the radial structure of two-photon wave functions. Our work suggests that, in parallel with angular position and OAM, the radial position and radial momentum can offer a new platform for a fundamental test of quantum mechanics and for novel application of quantum information.