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Physical Review Applied

Generation of heralded vector-polarized single photons in remotely controlled topological classes

Samuel Corona-Aquino, Zeferino Ibarra-Borja, Omar Calderón-Losada, Bruno Piccirillo, Verónica Vicuña-Hernández, Tonatiuh Moctezuma-Quistian, Héctor Cruz-Ramírez, Dorilian Lopez-Mago, Alfred B. U’Ren

Published Mar 15, 2024• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as vector vortex and full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q -plate device, which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as a pump in a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single-photon transfer of the intensity and phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single-photon transfer. We show that this nonlocal control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to opportunities in photon-based quantum information processing science. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

DOI
10.1103/physrevapplied.21.034030

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Journal of the Optical Society of America B•Nov 26, 2025•2 citations
We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as vector vortex and full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q -plate device, which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as a pump in a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single-photon transfer of the intensity and phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single-photon transfer. We show that this nonlocal control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to opportunities in photon-based quantum information processing science. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We demonstrate an experimental protocol for the preparation and control of heralded single photons in inhomogeneously polarized states, such as Vector Vortex and Full Poincaré beam states. A laser beam is shaped by a voltage-controlled spin-to-orbital angular momentum converter q-plate device which eliminates the need for an interferometer for the robust preparation of high-quality inhomogeneously polarized beams. Such a beam is then used as pump in a spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) photon-pair source. We demonstrate the full pump to heralded single photon transfer of the intensity/phase distributions, as well as of the vector polarization structure. Additionally, we show that by controlling the polarization to which the heralding idler photon is projected before detection, we can toggle between the direct and basis-switched pump-single photon transfer. We show that this non-local control of the heralded single photon pertains also to the topological class of the resulting heralded single photon. We believe that our work will lead to new opportunities in photons-based quantum information processing science.
Polarization structured heralded single photons have been generated through spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a type-I dual crystal pumped by an inhomogeneously polarized beam in a general Poincaré mode, i.e. an inseparable superposition of two orthogonally polarized states through two orthogonal orbital angular momentum modes. The polarization structure of the signal photons can be controlled by manipulating the polarization state of their idler photon sisters with zero orbital angular. Due to the separate conservations of spin and orbital angular momenta in a type-I dual crystal SPDC process, any projection of the idler polarization state turns into a unitary transformation of the polarization basis of the signal photons, while preserving the orbital angular momentum modes originally included in the pump. We demonstrate, in this way, the ability to toggle between direct and basis-switched pump-single photon transfer by selectively projecting the polarization of the heralding photon before detection.
We show that an optical vortex beam, implemented classically, can be transferred to the transverse amplitude of a heralded single photon. For this purpose we have relied on the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) for the generation of signal and idler photon pairs, using a pump in the form of a Bessel-Gauss (BG) beam with orbital angular momentum (specifically, with topological charge l = 1 and l = 2). We have designed our source so that it operates within the short SPDC crystal regime for which, the amplitude and phase of the pump may be transferred to a heralded single photon. In order to verify the vortex nature of our heralded single photon, we have shown that the conditional angular spectrum and the transverse intensity at the single-photon level match similar measurements carried out for the pump. In addition, we have shown that when our heralded single photon is diffracted through a triangular aperture, the far-field single-photon transverse intensity exhibits the expected triangular arrangement of intensity lobes associated with the presence of orbital angular momentum.
Optical vortex beams are profiled as helical wavefronts with a phase singularity carrying an orbital angular momentum (OAM) associated with their spatial distribution. The transverse intensity distribution of a conventional optical vortex has a strong dependence on the carried topological charge. However, perfect optical vortex (POV) beams have their transverse intensity distribution independent of their charge. Such “size-invariant” POV beams have found exciting applications in optical manipulation, imaging, and communication. In this paper, we investigate the use of POV modes in the efficient generation of high-dimensional quantum states of light. We generate heralded single photons carrying OAM using spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) of POV beams. We show that the heralding efficiency of the SPDC single photons generated with a POV pump is greater than that with normal optical vortex beams. The dimensionality of the two-photon OAM states is increased with POV modes in the pump and projective measurements using Bessel–Gaussian vortex modes that give POV, instead of Laguerre–Gaussian modes.
The ability to manipulate the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a single photon is of vital importance to photonic quantum technologies. A particularly relevant operation is the phase conjugation of OAM. One can in principle achieve this using stimulated parametric down-conversion (StimPDC), which produces an idler beam that exhibits a phase conjugate of the seed beam’s spatial structure. However, implementing StimPDC for single-photon OAM phase conjugation remains challenging. This is because the photon flux of realistic single-photon sources is low compared to that of a classical pump beam, which causes the StimPDC process to occur less frequently compared to its spontaneous counterpart. To overcome this, we propose a cascaded parametric down-conversion scheme, in which the signal photon from a spontaneously down-converted pair seeds the StimPDC process, while the idler photon heralds the seed’s presence. This configuration uses coincidence detection to effectively post-select for stimulated events among the background of spontaneous contributions. We show that single-photon OAM phase conjugation manifests as a bias toward equal OAM between the heralding idler and the stimulated idler. Our results offer a practical route to manipulate single-photon correlations in the OAM degree of freedom and could have implications for applications such as free-space quantum communication and quantum-enhanced sensing.