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Advanced Photonics

Photon total angular momentum manipulation

Lang Li, Yingchi Guo, Zhichao Zhang, Zijun Shang, Chen Li, Jiaqi Wang, Liliang Gao, Lan Hai, Chunqing Gao, Shiyao Fu

Published Aug 30, 2023• 61 citations
Publisher

Abstract

As an inherent degree of freedom, total angular momentum (TAM) of photons consisting of spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum has inspired many advanced applications and attracted much attention in recent years. Probing TAM and tailoring beam’s TAM spectrum on demand are of great significance for TAM-based scenarios. We propose both theoretically and experimentally a TAM processor enabling tunable TAM manipulation. Such a processor consists of a set of quasi-symmetric units, and each unit is composed of a couple of diffraction optical elements fabricated through polymerized liquid crystals. Forty-two single TAM states are experimentally employed to prove the concept. The favorable results illustrate good TAM state selection performance, which makes it particularly attractive for high-speed large-capacity data transmission, optical computing, and high-security photon encryption systems.

DOI
10.1117/1.ap.5.5.056002

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As an inherent degree of freedom, total angular momentum (TAM) of photons consisting of spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum has inspired many advanced applications and attracted much attention in recent years. Probing TAM and tailoring beam’s TAM spectrum on demand are of great significance for TAM-based scenarios. We propose both theoretically and experimentally a TAM processor enabling tunable TAM manipulation. Such a processor consists of a set of quasi-symmetric units, and each unit is composed of a couple of diffraction optical elements fabricated through polymerized liquid crystals. Forty-two single TAM states are experimentally employed to prove the concept. The favorable results illustrate good TAM state selection performance, which makes it particularly attractive for high-speed large-capacity data transmission, optical computing, and high-security photon encryption systems.
Optical elements that couple the spin/orbital angular momentum (SAM/OAM) of light have found a range of applications in classical and quantum optics. The J-plate, which refers to the variable denoting the photon’s total angular momentum (TAM), is a metasurface device that allows converting arbitrary, orthogonal input SAM states into two unique OAM states. Using independent phase control of any orthogonal basis of polarization states, the J-plate permits the conversion of arbitrary polarizations into states with arbitrary OAM. Here, we present a further development: Cascaded J-plates provide for versatile combinations of OAM states on any orthogonal basis of spin states. J-plates operating on different polarization bases and imparting independent values of OAM are designed and experimentally demonstrated to generate multiple OAM channels with different polarization states. The generated OAM states are determined by the superposition of the OAM states of the individual J-plates while the generated SAM states are determined by the polarization basis of the last J-plate. Theoretically, there are maximum of 2^n channels of OAM and n×2^n channels of TAM that can be generated by n such cascaded J-plates. It is also demonstrated that cascaded J-plates may produce complex structured light. Cascading J-plates provides a new way to control the TAM of a laser beam. These results may find application in quantum and classical communication.
Photons are an ideal candidate for encoding both classical and quantum information. Besides spin angular momentum associated with circular polarization, single photon can also carry other fundamentally new degree of freedom of orbital angular momentum related to the spiral phase structure of light. The key significance of orbital angular momentum lies in its potential in realizing a high-dimensional Hilbert space and in encoding a high-dimensional quantum information. Since Allen et al. [Allen L, Beijersbergen M W, Spreeuw R J C, Woerdman J P 1992 Phys. Rev. A 45 8185] recognized the physical reality of photon orbital angular momentum in 1992, rapidly growing interest has been aroused in orbital angular momentum (OAM) from both classical and quantum points of view. Here we present an overall review on the high-order orbital angular momentum of photon, including its preparation and manipulation based on some specific techniques and also its applications. The spatial light modulator is a commercial device that has been widely employed to generate the OAM beams. We make and identify the optical OAM superposition with very high quantum numbers up to l=360. Recently, the metallic spiral phase mirrors were also developed to produce high-order OAM beams up to l=5050. In addition, the Q-plates made of anisotropic and inhomogeneous liquid crystals were invented to generate high-order OAM beams in a polarization-controllable manner, and the OAM superposition of l=± 50 were achieved. Owing to high rotational symmetry, these high OAM beams have been found to have more and more important applications in the fields of high-sensitivity sensing and high-precision measurements. Two fascinating examples are discussed in detail. The first example is that the research group led by Prof. Zeilinger has prepared and observed the quantum entanglement of high orbital angular momenta up to l=±300 by the technique of polarization-OAM entanglement swapping, and they demonstrated that the angular resolution could be significantly improved by a factor of l. Their result was the first step for entangling and twisting even macroscopic, spatially separated objects in two different directions. The second example is that the research group led by Prof. Padgett has demonstrated an elegant experiment of rotational Doppler effects for visible light with l=±20 OAM superposition. They showed that a spinning object with an optically rough surface might induce a Doppler effect in light reflected from the direction parallel to the rotation axis, and the frequency shift was proportional to both the disk's angular speed and the optical OAM. The potential applications in noncontact measurement of angular speed and in significant improvement of angular resolution for remote sensing will be particularly fascinating.
Abstract Quantum nanophotonics offers essential tools and technologies for controlling quantum states, while maintaining a miniature form factor and high scalability. Nanophotonic platforms can transfer information from the traditional degrees of freedom (DoFs) of photons, such as spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM), to the DoFs of the nanophotonic platform—and back, opening new directions for quantum information processing. Recent experiments have utilized, for entanglement the total angular momentum (TAM) of a photon—as a unique DoF of nanophotonic platforms—for demonstrating entanglement in TAM. Here, we unravel the morphing of quantum states of heralded single photons as they couple into and out of the near-field of a nanophotonic system. Through quantum state tomography, we discover that the TAM state of the near-field transforms to a free-space entangled state within a larger Hilbert space of SAM and OAM. Furthermore, we show that this entangled single photon state is in fact a quantum optical Stokes skyrmion with a topological invariant of ±2\pm 2±2 ± 2 . The concepts described here bring new ideas and methodologies in developing high-dimensional quantum circuitry on a chip.
Parallel sorting of orbital and spin angular momentum components of structured optical beams is demonstrated. Both spin channels are multiplexed within the novel orbital angular momentum (OAM) sorter, reducing the size, weight, and number of elements. The sorted states are linearly spaced over 70 topological charge values. We experimentally and theoretically evaluate the operational range and crosstalk between neighboring channels and find that 30 orbital angular momentum states are available per spin channel for quantum communication or cryptography. This is achieved using an angular momentum sorter that we developed based on geometric phase optical elements. We present two devices consisting of liquid crystal polymer films photoaligned with complex two-dimensional patterns.
Single photons with orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted substantial attention from researchers. A single photon can carry infinite OAM values theoretically. Thus, OAM photon states have been widely used in quantum information and fundamental quantum mechanics. Although there have been many methods for sorting quantum states with different OAM values, the nondestructive and efficient sorter of high-dimensional OAM remains a fundamental challenge. Here, we propose a scalable OAM sorter which can categorize different OAM states simultaneously, meanwhile, preserving both OAM and spin angular momentum. Fundamental elements of the sorter are composed of symmetric multiport beam splitters (BSs) and Dove prisms with cascading structure, which in principle can be flexibly and effectively combined to sort arbitrarily high-dimensional OAM photons. The scalable structures proposed here greatly reduce the number of BSs required for sorting high-dimensional OAM states. In view of the nondestructive and extensible features, the sorters can be used as fundamental devices not only for high-dimensional quantum information processing, but also for traditional optics.
The bandwidth of any communication system, classical or quantum, is limited by the number of orthogonal states in which the information can be encoded. Quantum key distribution systems available commercially rely on the two-dimensional polarisation state of photons. Quantum computation has also been largely designed on the basis of qubits. However, a photon is endowed with other degrees of freedom, such as orbital angular momentum (OAM). OAM is an attractive basis to be used for quantum information because it is discrete and theoretically infinite-dimensional. This promises a higher information capacity per photon which can lead to more complex quantum computation protocols and more security and robustness for quantum cryptography. Entanglement of OAM naturally arises from spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). However, any practical experiment utilising the innately high-dimensional entanglement of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) state space of photons is subject to the modal capacity of the detection system. Only a finite subset of this space is accessible experimentally. Given such a constraint, we show that the number of measured, entangled OAM modes in photon pairs generated by SPDC can be increased by tuning the phase-matching conditions in the SPDC process. We achieve this by tuning the orientation angle of the nonlinear crystal generating the entangled photons.