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Science

Quantum entanglement of the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons using metamaterials

Tomer Stav, Arkady Faerman, Elhanan Maguid, Dikla Oren, Vladimir Kleiner, Erez Hasman, Mordechai Segev

Published Sep 13, 2018• 501 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Metamaterials constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks have been used to demonstrate phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and ε-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity, and superresolution imaging. More recently, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics. We present the use of a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons. We demonstrate the generation of the four Bell states on a single photon by using the geometric phase that arises from the photonic spin-orbit interaction and subsequently show nonlocal correlations between two photons that interacted with the metasurface. Our results show that metamaterials are suitable for the generation and manipulation of entangled photon states, introducing the area of quantum optics metamaterials.

DOI
10.1126/science.aat9042

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Metamaterials constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks have been used to demonstrate phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and ε-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity, and superresolution imaging. More recently, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics. We present the use of a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons. We demonstrate the generation of the four Bell states on a single photon by using the geometric phase that arises from the photonic spin-orbit interaction and subsequently show nonlocal correlations between two photons that interacted with the metasurface. Our results show that metamaterials are suitable for the generation and manipulation of entangled photon states, introducing the area of quantum optics metamaterials.
Metamaterials have been a major research area for more than two decades now, involving artificial structures with predesigned electromagnetic properties constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks. They have been used to demonstrate a wealth of fascinating phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and epsilon-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity effects, and super-resolution imaging, to name a few. In the past few years, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics, and several pioneering experiments have already been carried out with single photons. Here, we employ a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons. We demonstrate experimentally the generation of the four Bell states by utilizing the geometric phase arising from the photonic spin-orbit interaction. These are the first experiments with entangled states with metasurfaces, and as such they are paving the way to the new area of quantum metamaterials.
High-dimensional entanglement is of great importance in quantum communications and can be realized by encoding information on multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs) of the photons. Conventionally, the realization of such high-dimensional entanglement involves different combinations of bulky optical elements. In this work, we present the use of a single dielectric metasurface to generate high-dimensional entanglement by modulating multi-DoFs of photons. By sending one of the polarization-entangled photons to interact with the metasurface, we encode path, spin angular momentum, and orbital angular momentum information to the original state. We achieve a four-qubit quantum state in the experiment. To verify it, we experimentally demonstrate the nonlocal correlations between the two photons by recording the correlated images, and we also perform a quantum state tomography measurement. This scheme can be applied to on-chip quantum state manipulation, which is promising in quantum communication with integrated components.
Metamaterials Metasurfaces should allow wafer-thin surfaces to replace bulk optical components. Two reports now demonstrate that metasurfaces can be extended into the quantum optical regime. Wang et al. determined the quantum state of multiple photons by simply passing them through a dielectric metasurface, scattering them into single-photon detectors. Stav et al. used a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between spin and orbital angular momentum of single photons. The results should aid the development of integrated quantum optic circuits operating on a nanophotonic platform. Science , this issue p. [1104][1], p. [1101][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aat8196 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aat9042
Abstract Metamaterials consisting of deep subwavelength artificial “atoms” have been utilized to demonstrate a series of novel phenomena such as negative refraction and epsilon‐near‐zero. In recent times, metamaterials have been developed as an up‐and‐coming platform for quantum optics. Here the generation and modulation of photonic entanglement are investigated based on the parametric down conversion processes in metamaterials with considerable optical nonlinearity. Through flexible nanostructure design, the nonlinear photonic interaction in the metamaterial system can be effectively tailored. The distributions of optical parameters of the system are inhomogeneous, based on which the spatial properties of the generated photonic state can be steered as desired. The theoretical framework to describe this system is established based on the nonlinear Huygens–Fresnel principle, and a differential approach is utilized to deal with the intrinsic loss of the system. The generation of orbital angular momentum entangled states is actually considered as an illustration. This platform could be valuable for the practical applications of quantum information processing.
Twisted photons can in principle carry a discrete unbounded amount of orbital angular momentum (OAM), which are of great significance for quantum communication and fundamental tests of quantum theory. However, the methods for characterization of the OAM quantum states present a fundamental limit for miniaturization. Metasurfaces can exploit new degrees of freedom to manipulate optical fields beyond the capabilities of bulk optics, opening a broad range of novel and superior applications in quantum photonics. Here we present a scheme to reconstruct the density matrix of the OAM quantum states of single photons with all-dielectric metasurfaces composed of birefringent meta-atoms. We have also measured the Schmidt number of the OAM entanglement by the multiplexing of multiple degrees of freedom. Our work represents a step toward the practical application of quantum metadevices for the measurement of OAM quantum states in free-space quantum imaging and communications.