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European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

Photonic gears for ultra-sensitive angular measurements

Vincenzo D’Ambrosio, Nicolò Spagnolo, Lorenzo Del Re, Sergei Slussarenko, Y. Li, L. C. Kwek, Lorenzo Marrucci, Stephen Patrick Walborn, Leandro Aolita, Fabio Sciarrino

Published Jun 21, 2015• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Quantum metrology bears a great promise in enhancing measurement precision, but is unlikely to become practical in the near future. Its concepts can nevertheless inspire classical or hybrid methods of immediate value. Here we demonstrate NOON-like photonic states of m quanta of angular momentum up to m 1⁄4 100, in a setup that acts as a ‘photonic gear’, converting, for each photon, a mechanical rotation of an angle y into an amplified rotation of the optical polarization by my, corresponding to a ‘super-resolving’ Malus’ law. We show that this effect leads to single-photon angular measurements with the same precision of polarization-only quantum strategies with m photons, but robust to photon losses. Moreover, we combine the gear effect with the quantum enhancement due to entanglement, thus exploiting the advantages of both approaches. The high ‘gear ratio’ m boosts the current state of the art of optical non-contact angular measurements by almost two orders of magnitude.

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Quantum metrology bears a great promise in enhancing measurement precision, but is unlikely to become practical in the near future. Its concepts can nevertheless inspire classical or hybrid methods of immediate value. Here we demonstrate NOON-like photonic states of m quanta of angular momentum up to m=100, in a setup that acts as a ‘photonic gear’, converting, for each photon, a mechanical rotation of an angle θ into an amplified rotation of the optical polarization by mθ, corresponding to a ‘super-resolving’ Malus’ law. We show that this effect leads to single-photon angular measurements with the same precision of polarization-only quantum strategies with m photons, but robust to photon losses. Moreover, we combine the gear effect with the quantum enhancement due to entanglement, thus exploiting the advantages of both approaches. The high ‘gear ratio’ m boosts the current state of the art of optical non-contact angular measurements by almost two orders of magnitude. Beating the standard measurement limits is a goal of metrology, as it would allow for more precise estimation of physical quantities. Borrowing concepts from NOON-state quantum metrology, this work presents a single-photon scheme to measure rotation angles of light with super-resolution precision.

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From q-plates to the photonic gear: tailoring the rotational properties of light

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Photon polarization is usually exploited for quantum communication tasks as well as for roll angles measurements. However, it is also possible to encode information in other degrees of freedom of single photons like path or orbital angular momentum. When two or more degrees of freedom are exploited at the same time we refer to it as hybrid encoding. Single photon hybrid states encoded in polarization and orbital angular momentum show properties that make such states a useful resource in quantum communication and in roll angle measurements. In the first case they allow two users to communicate without sharing a reference frame even in presence of turbulences, in the second one they provide a sensitivity enhancement of optical non-contact angular measurements.

Research in Optical Sciences•Jan 1, 2014•0 citations
Quantum metrology bears a great promise in enhancing measurement precision, but is unlikely to become practical in the near future. Its concepts can nevertheless inspire classical or hybrid methods of immediate value. Here we demonstrate NOON-like photonic states of m quanta of angular momentum up to m 1⁄4 100, in a setup that acts as a ‘photonic gear’, converting, for each photon, a mechanical rotation of an angle y into an amplified rotation of the optical polarization by my, corresponding to a ‘super-resolving’ Malus’ law. We show that this effect leads to single-photon angular measurements with the same precision of polarization-only quantum strategies with m photons, but robust to photon losses. Moreover, we combine the gear effect with the quantum enhancement due to entanglement, thus exploiting the advantages of both approaches. The high ‘gear ratio’ m boosts the current state of the art of optical non-contact angular measurements by almost two orders of magnitude.
Quantum metrology bears a great promise in enhancing measurement precision, but is unlikely to become practical in the near future. Its concepts can nevertheless inspire classical or hybrid methods of immediate value. Here we demonstrate NOON-like photonic states of m quanta of angular momentum up to m=100, in a setup that acts as a ‘photonic gear’, converting, for each photon, a mechanical rotation of an angle θ into an amplified rotation of the optical polarization by mθ, corresponding to a ‘super-resolving’ Malus’ law. We show that this effect leads to single-photon angular measurements with the same precision of polarization-only quantum strategies with m photons, but robust to photon losses. Moreover, we combine the gear effect with the quantum enhancement due to entanglement, thus exploiting the advantages of both approaches. The high ‘gear ratio’ m boosts the current state of the art of optical non-contact angular measurements by almost two orders of magnitude. Beating the standard measurement limits is a goal of metrology, as it would allow for more precise estimation of physical quantities. Borrowing concepts from NOON-state quantum metrology, this work presents a single-photon scheme to measure rotation angles of light with super-resolution precision.
The rotational properties of a light beam are controlled by its spin and orbital angular momentum (SAM and OAM). The q-plate, a liquid crystal device that can give rise to a coupling of these two quantities, was introduced a few years ago, leading to several applications in classical and quantum photonics. Very recently, in particular, a specific kind of q-plate was used to generate rotational-invariant states of single photons, which were then employed for performing a demonstration of quantum key distribution without the need for establishing a common reference frame between the transmitting and the receiving units. This result may find applications in future satellite-based quantum communication. By a similar approach, photonic states having a strongly enhanced rotational sensitivity, as opposed to rotational invariance, can be generated by using q-plates with very high topological charge. Photons in these states can be obtained starting from light having a uniform linear polarization and, after a physical rotation, can be converted back into light having uniformly linear polarization. As a result, one obtains linearly polarized light whose polarization plane rotates by an angle that is proportional to the angle of physical rotation between the generation and detection stages, with a very large proportionality constant. This effect of rotational amplification, which we named “photonic gear”, leads to a sort of “super-resolved Malus’ law”, potentially useful for measuring mechanical angles with very high precision.
Quantum metrology leverages quantum correlations for enhanced parameter estimation. Recently, structured light enabled increased resolution and sensitivity in quantum metrology systems. However, lossy and complex setups impacting photon flux, hinder true quantum advantage while using high dimensional structured light. We introduce a straightforward mechanical rotation quantum sensing mechanism, employing high-dimensional structured light and a compact high-flux (45,000 coincidence counts per second) N00N state source with N=2. The system utilizes two opposite spiral phase plates with topological charge of up to l=16 that convert mechanical rotation into wavefront phase shifts, and exhibit a 16-fold enhanced super-resolution and 25-fold enhanced sensitivity between different topological charges, while retaining the acquisition times and with negligible change in coincidence count. Furthermore, the high photon flux enables to detect mechanical angular acceleration in real-time. Our approach paves the way for highly sensitive quantum measurements, applicable to various interferometric schemes.
Quantum metrology leverages quantum correlations for enhanced parameter estimation. Recently, structured light enabled increased resolution and sensitivity in quantum metrology systems. However, lossy and complex setups impacting photon flux hinder true quantum advantage while using high dimensional structured light. We introduce a straightforward mechanical rotation quantum sensing mechanism, employing high-dimensional structured light and use it with a high-flux (45 000 coincidence counts per second) N00N state source with N = 2. The system utilizes two opposite spiral phase plates with topological charge of up to ℓ = 16 that converts mechanical rotation into wavefront phase shifts and exhibit a 16-fold enhanced super-resolution and 25-fold enhanced sensitivity between different topological charges, while retaining the acquisition times, and with negligible change in coincidence count. Furthermore, the high efficiency together with the high photon flux enables detection of mechanical angular acceleration in real-time. Our approach paves the way for highly sensitive quantum measurements, applicable to various interferometric schemes.
Abstract Quantum metrology promises measurement precision beyond the classical limit by using suitably tailored quantum states and detection strategies. However, scaling up this advantage is experimentally challenging, due to the difficulty of generating high-quality large-scale probes. Here, we build a photonic setup that achieves enhanced precision scaling by manipulating the probe’s dynamics through operations performed in a coherently controlled order. Our setup applies an unknown rotation and a known orbital angular momentum increase in a coherently controlled order, in a way that reproduces a hybrid quantum SWITCH involving gates generated by both discrete and continuous variables. The unknown rotation angle θ is measured with precision scaling as 1/4ml when a photon undergoes a rotation of 2mθ and an angular momentum shift of 2lℏ. With a practical enhancement factor as high as 2317, the ultimate precision in our experiment is 0.0105′′ when using 7.16 × 107 photons, corresponding to a normalized precision of ≈ 10−4rad per photon. No photon interaction occurs in our experiment, and the precision enhancement consumes only a linearly increasing amount of physical resources while achieving a nonlinear scaling of the precision.
Photon polarization is usually exploited for quantum communication tasks as well as for roll angles measurements. However, it is also possible to encode information in other degrees of freedom of single photons like path or orbital angular momentum. When two or more degrees of freedom are exploited at the same time we refer to it as hybrid encoding. Single photon hybrid states encoded in polarization and orbital angular momentum show properties that make such states a useful resource in quantum communication and in roll angle measurements. In the first case they allow two users to communicate without sharing a reference frame even in presence of turbulences, in the second one they provide a sensitivity enhancement of optical non-contact angular measurements.