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Physical Review Letters

Mimicking Faraday Rotation to Sort the Orbital Angular Momentum of Light

Wuhong Zhang, Qianqian Qi, Jie Zhou, Lixiang Chen

Published Apr 14, 2014• 126 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The efficient separation of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) is essential to both the classical and quantum applications with twisted photons. Here we devise and demonstrate experimentally an efficient method of mimicking the Faraday rotation to sort the OAM based on the OAM-to-polarization coupling effect induced by a modified Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Our device is capable of sorting the OAM of positive and negative numbers, as well as their mixtures. Furthermore, we report the first experimental demonstration to sort optical vortices of noninteger charges. The possibility of working at the photon-count level is also shown using an electron-multiplying CCD camera. Our scheme holds promise for quantum information applications with single-photon entanglement and for high-capacity communication systems with polarization and OAM multiplexing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.112.153601

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The efficient separation of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) is essential to both the classical and quantum applications with twisted photons. Here we devise and demonstrate experimentally an efficient method of mimicking the Faraday rotation to sort the OAM based on the OAM-to-polarization coupling effect induced by a modified Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Our device is capable of sorting the OAM of positive and negative numbers, as well as their mixtures. Furthermore, we report the first experimental demonstration to sort optical vortices of noninteger charges. The possibility of working at the photon-count level is also shown using an electron-multiplying CCD camera. Our scheme holds promise for quantum information applications with single-photon entanglement and for high-capacity communication systems with polarization and OAM multiplexing.
We report on an imaging-inspired measurement of orbital angular momentum (OAM) using only a simple tilted lens and an intensified charged coupled device camera, allowing us to monitor the propagation of OAM structured photons over distance, which is crucial for free-space quantum communication networks. We demonstrate the measurement of OAM orders as high as ls = 14 in a heralded single-photon source and show, for the first time, the imaged self-interference of photons carrying OAM in a modified Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The described methods reveal both the charge and order of a photon's OAM and provide a proof of concept for the interference of a single OAM photon with itself. Using these tools, we are able to study the propagation characteristics of OAM photons over a distance, which is important for estimating transport in free-space quantum links. By translating these classical tools into the quantum domain, we offer a robust and direct approach for the complete characterization of a twisted single-photon source, an important building block of a quantum network.
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons has both classical and quantum applications due to its feature of optical vortex and infinite dimension. OAM discrimination is one of the basic problems, which has been paid much attention recently. Here we present an interferometer method in which a Sagnac interferometer with a Dove prism is placed on each arm to separate the different OAM of photons into different output ports, namely, OAM sorters. We demonstrate experimentally the feasibility of OAM sorter by dividing different OAM states into different output ports. Using the cascade interferometers, we also sort the superposition state successfully. Experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions. Compared with other methods, this method is more stable and can be used to separate superposition states into single photon levels. Furthermore, this method can also be used to couple OAM modes with spatial modes, a very important method for manipulating OAM states. It is a useful method and has potential applications in high-capacity optical communication, quantum entanglement, quantum cryptography, quantum computation and quantum information.
The non-destructive identification of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) is essential to various applications in the optical information processing. Here, we propose and demonstrate experimentally an efficient method to identify non-destructively the OAM by using a modified Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Our schemes are applicable not only to the case with integer charges, but also to optical vortices with noninteger charges. Our Letter presents the first experimental demonstration of the non-destructive identification of twisted light with integer or noninteger topological charges, which has potential applications in the OAM-based data transmission for optical communications.
In this paper we show that an optical setup based on a polarizing Sagnac interferometer combined with a Dove prism can be used as a convenient general-purpose tool for the generation, detection and sorting of spin-orbit states of light. This device can work both in the classical and in the quantum single-photon regime, provides higher sorting efficiency and extinction ratio than usual hologram-fiber combinations, and shows much higher stability and ease of alignment than Mach-Zehnder interferometer setups. To demonstrate the full potential of this setup, we also report some demonstrative experiments of several possible applications of this setup.
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) carried by optical beams is a useful quantity for encoding information. This form of encoding has been incorporated into various works ranging from telecommunications to quantum cryptography, most of which require methods that can rapidly process the OAM content of a beam. Among current state-of-the-art schemes that can readily acquire this information are so-called OAM sorters, which consist of devices that spatially separate the OAM components of a beam. Such devices have found numerous applications in optical communications, a field that is in constant demand for additional degrees of freedom, such as polarization and wavelength, into which information can also be encoded. Here, we report the implementation of a device capable of sorting a beam based on its OAM and polarization content, which could be of use in works employing both of these degrees of freedom as information channels. After characterizing our fabricated device, we demonstrate how it can be used for quantum communications via a quantum key distribution protocol.
Based on single-photon spin–orbit entanglement, we propose in this paper an experimental scheme to sort orbital angular momentum (OAM) by cascading conventional polarizing beam splitters. An economical algorithm, taking advantage of the pair's complementary notation of OAM numbers, is designed to separate a mixture of definite OAM. Our scheme provides an alternative technique to encode OAM onto multiple spin states based on a Huffman tree and its potential in optical communication is demonstrated.