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Physical Review A

Radial modal dependence of the azimuthal spectrum after parametric down-conversion

Yingwen Zhang, Filippus Stefanus Roux, Melanie G. McLaren, Andrew Forbes

Published Apr 14, 2014• 34 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The radial degrees of freedom of the biphoton states that are produced in spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) basis are investigated, theoretically and experimentally. We calculated the theoretical azimuthal Schmidt numbers for different combinations of radial indices and found that a larger azimuthal Schmidt number is obtained for higher radial indices of the signal and idler beams. Moreover, larger azimuthal Schmidt numbers are also obtained when the difference between the two radial indices increases. Comparing these theoretical predictions with the azimuthal Schmidt numbers obtained from experimentally measurements, we found good agreement. Experimentally we demonstrated that it is possible to obtain a threefold increase in the azimuthal Schmidt number while maintaining a reasonable coincidence count rate by using LG modes with slightly larger radial indices.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.89.043820

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Considering the quantum state produced in type I spontaneous parametric down-conversion with collinear, degenerate signal and idler beams, and a Gaussian pump, we show that the azimuthal Schmidt number in the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) basis increases when the radial indices of the LG modes detected in the signal and idler beams are different. These observations are confirmed by the good agreement between theoretical and experimental results. The theoretical results are obtained by deriving expressions for the probability amplitude to detect LG modes with any combination of azimuthal and radial indices in a down-converted photonic quantum state.

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High-dimensional spatially entangled two-photon state generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion process (SPDC) has become a promising resource for several quantum information science applications. For harnessing high-dimensional entanglement advantages, detection capability in the Schmidt basis is a necessity. Spatial entanglement has been explored in several modal bases, such as pixel, azimuthal, and radial modes. Among them, pixel and azimuthal entanglement have been widely utilized due to efficient access to their Schmidt modes, while radial-mode entanglement remains underexploited. This is because for radial coordinates, there is neither a Schmidt-decomposed form for the SPDC photons nor is there a technique for measuring high-dimensional radial Schmidt modes, which is a major roadblock in harnessing radial mode advantages. In this work, we first theoretically show that the azimuthal averaging of SPDC two-photon state yields a radial Schmidt-decomposed form under typical experimental situations. We then demonstrate an innovative approach for extracting the radial Schmidt modes and their spectrum by characterizing the density matrix in the radial basis of one of the SPDC photons. Finally, we report the first-ever measurement of radial Schmidt spectrum of upto 50 radial Schmidt modes with about 98\% fidelity.

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The OAM or spiral bandwidth indicates the dimensionality of an entangled state that is produced by the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process. Normally this bandwidth is determined by modulating the signal and idler beams with helical phase functions with opposite azimuthal indices on the spatial light modulators in the signal and idler beams, respectively. We added an additional binary Bessel function to the helical phase, thereby specifying the radial dependence of the mode to be Bessel-Gaussian (BG) modes. This comes down to a post selection process, which is known to have the ability to increase entanglement. The result is a modification to the shape of the OAM spectrum, which leads to a higher dimensionality for the quantum states. We perform analytical calculations to show that the bandwidths obtained by measuring in the BG modal basis are larger than those for the LG modes. These theoretical predictions are confirmed by experimental measurements of the bandwidths for LG modes and for BG modes with different transverse scales.

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Mar 5, 2013•0 citations
The radial degrees of freedom of the biphoton states that are produced in spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) basis are investigated, theoretically and experimentally. We calculated the theoretical azimuthal Schmidt numbers for different combinations of radial indices and found that a larger azimuthal Schmidt number is obtained for higher radial indices of the signal and idler beams. Moreover, larger azimuthal Schmidt numbers are also obtained when the difference between the two radial indices increases. Comparing these theoretical predictions with the azimuthal Schmidt numbers obtained from experimentally measurements, we found good agreement. Experimentally we demonstrated that it is possible to obtain a threefold increase in the azimuthal Schmidt number while maintaining a reasonable coincidence count rate by using LG modes with slightly larger radial indices.
Considering the quantum state produced in type I spontaneous parametric down-conversion with collinear, degenerate signal and idler beams, and a Gaussian pump, we show that the azimuthal Schmidt number in the Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) basis increases when the radial indices of the LG modes detected in the signal and idler beams are different. These observations are confirmed by the good agreement between theoretical and experimental results. The theoretical results are obtained by deriving expressions for the probability amplitude to detect LG modes with any combination of azimuthal and radial indices in a down-converted photonic quantum state.
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.
We investigate the effect of the down-conversion angle between the signal and idler beams in spontaneous parametric down-conversion on the bandwidth of the modal spectrum (Schmidt number) of the down-converted quantum state. For this purpose, we consider both the full Schmidt number and the azimuthal Schmidt number in the Laguerre-Gaussian basis. For the full Schmidt number, we show that the approximation of the phase-matching function with a Gaussian function gives results that disagree significantly from those obtained with the more physical sinc-type phase-matching function. We found a drastic increase in both the Schmidt number and the azimuthal Schmidt number for small down-conversion angles, in agreement with recent experimental results.
High-dimensional spatially entangled two-photon state generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion process (SPDC) has become a promising resource for several quantum information science applications. For harnessing high-dimensional entanglement advantages, detection capability in the Schmidt basis is a necessity. Spatial entanglement has been explored in several modal bases, such as pixel, azimuthal, and radial modes. Among them, pixel and azimuthal entanglement have been widely utilized due to efficient access to their Schmidt modes, while radial-mode entanglement remains underexploited. This is because for radial coordinates, there is neither a Schmidt-decomposed form for the SPDC photons nor is there a technique for measuring high-dimensional radial Schmidt modes, which is a major roadblock in harnessing radial mode advantages. In this work, we first theoretically show that the azimuthal averaging of SPDC two-photon state yields a radial Schmidt-decomposed form under typical experimental situations. We then demonstrate an innovative approach for extracting the radial Schmidt modes and their spectrum by characterizing the density matrix in the radial basis of one of the SPDC photons. Finally, we report the first-ever measurement of radial Schmidt spectrum of upto 50 radial Schmidt modes with about 98\% fidelity.
Abstract High-dimensional spatially entangled two-photon states generated by the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process (SPDC) have become a promising resource for several quantum information science applications. In order to harness high-dimensional entanglement advantages, detection capability in the Schmidt basis is a necessity. Spatial entanglement has been explored in several modal bases, such as pixel, azimuthal, and radial modes. Among them, pixel and azimuthal entanglement have been widely utilized due to efficient access to their Schmidt modes, while radial-mode entanglement remains underexploited. This is due to radial coordinates not having a Schmidt-decomposed form for the SPDC photons or a technique for measuring high-dimensional radial Schmidt modes, which is a major roadblock in harnessing radial mode advantages. In this work, we first theoretically show that azimuthal averaging of SPDC two-photon states yields a radial Schmidt-decomposed form under typical experimental situations. We then demonstrate an innovative approach for extracting the radial Schmidt modes and their spectrum by characterizing the density matrix in the radial basis of one of the SPDC photons. Finally, we report the first-ever measurement of the radial Schmidt spectrum of up to 50 radial Schmidt modes with about 98% fidelity.
The OAM or spiral bandwidth indicates the dimensionality of an entangled state that is produced by the spontaneous parametric down-conversion process. Normally this bandwidth is determined by modulating the signal and idler beams with helical phase functions with opposite azimuthal indices on the spatial light modulators in the signal and idler beams, respectively. We added an additional binary Bessel function to the helical phase, thereby specifying the radial dependence of the mode to be Bessel-Gaussian (BG) modes. This comes down to a post selection process, which is known to have the ability to increase entanglement. The result is a modification to the shape of the OAM spectrum, which leads to a higher dimensionality for the quantum states. We perform analytical calculations to show that the bandwidths obtained by measuring in the BG modal basis are larger than those for the LG modes. These theoretical predictions are confirmed by experimental measurements of the bandwidths for LG modes and for BG modes with different transverse scales.