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Laser & Photonics Review

Three‐Photon High‐Order Orbital Angular Momentum NOON States for Sub‐Shot‐Noise Angular Measurement

Hui Li, Yan-Chao Lou, Wen-Zheng Zhu, Zhiming Qing, Jing Wang, Shu-Tian Xue, Shuang‐Yin Huang, J F Xu, Zhi‐Cheng Ren, Lijian Zhang, Xi‐Lin Wang, Hui‐Tian Wang

Published Jul 13, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

ABSTRACT The quantum measurement scheme exhibits significant advantages in precision measurement, due to super‐sensitivity. In particular, the multi‐photon NOON states realized via path or polarization degrees of freedom have been successfully validated in various phase measurement experiments. Orbital angular momentum (OAM), another important photonic degree of freedom, has also shown great potential for angular measurement. Combining the NOON state with OAM is expected to demonstrate quantum advantages in such measurements. Here we experimentally generate a three‐photon NOON state based on OAM for the first time, and apply it to super‐sensitive angular measurement. By utilizing a NOON state with a topological charge as high as , we have achieved a precision beyond the standard quantum limit. Through the reduction of angle uncertainty, a sensitivity reaching approximately 82% of the ideal Heisenberg limit is achieved. These results establish the practical utility of OAM‐enhanced NOON states in advancing angular metrology. Our experiments indicate that increasing either the topological charge or the photon number can substantially improve angular measurement accuracy. Importantly, the proposed scheme exhibits excellent scalability in key parameters, underscoring its potential for high‐precision angle‐sensing applications.

DOI
10.1002/lpor.71566

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ABSTRACT The quantum measurement scheme exhibits significant advantages in precision measurement, due to super‐sensitivity. In particular, the multi‐photon NOON states realized via path or polarization degrees of freedom have been successfully validated in various phase measurement experiments. Orbital angular momentum (OAM), another important photonic degree of freedom, has also shown great potential for angular measurement. Combining the NOON state with OAM is expected to demonstrate quantum advantages in such measurements. Here we experimentally generate a three‐photon NOON state based on OAM for the first time, and apply it to super‐sensitive angular measurement. By utilizing a NOON state with a topological charge as high as , we have achieved a precision beyond the standard quantum limit. Through the reduction of angle uncertainty, a sensitivity reaching approximately 82% of the ideal Heisenberg limit is achieved. These results establish the practical utility of OAM‐enhanced NOON states in advancing angular metrology. Our experiments indicate that increasing either the topological charge or the photon number can substantially improve angular measurement accuracy. Importantly, the proposed scheme exhibits excellent scalability in key parameters, underscoring its potential for high‐precision angle‐sensing applications.
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The orbital angular momentum (OAM) carried by twisted photons provides a promising playground for high-dimensional quantum information processing. While Bell-state measurement is the cornerstone for various quantum information applications, the deterministic discrimination of the complete high-dimensional Bell states with linear optics remains relatively unexplored in the OAM state space. Here, we demonstrate a theoretical scheme for the complete four-dimensional OAM Bell-state measurement by using the single-photon hyperentangled state analyzer, in which the auxiliary two-dimensional polarization entanglement and two-dimensional path entanglement are utilized. Our scheme offers an alternative route toward enhancing the channel capacity in quantum communication and increasing the robustness against deleterious noise in practical experiments with twisted photons.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a scheme for generating multimode quantum states with single photons carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). Various quantum states have been realized by superposing multiple OAM modes of single photons in two possible paths. These quantum states exhibit NOON-like "super-resolving" interference behavior for the multiple OAM modes of single photons. Compared with the NOON states using many photons, these states are not only easily prepared, but also robust to photon losses. They may find potential applications in quantum optical communication and recognizing defects or objects. The method to identify a particular kind of defect has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally.
The orbital angular momentum of light (OAM) is a fundamental property of light. Beams with OAM have a helical wave front that carries quantized orbital angular momentum L hbar per photon, where L is any integer. This unbounded Hilbert space can increase information capacity of both classical and quantum communications and also improve and extend qubit and qudit quantum algorithms. Additionally, the use of the OAM modes allows for novel imaging techniques to directly observe and measure various topological properties of objects ranging from defects in semiconductors to rotating black holes and extrasolar planets. However, measuring such higher dimensional OAM states is fundamentally important, albeit challenging, in order to use this rich degree of freedom. In the work that follows, I present two novel OAM to time mapping schemes and an application using the higher dimensionality of OAM to non-destructively probe quantum states. These are the first OAM measuring schemes to use the temporal degree of freedom to measure OAM. The use of the novel loop nature allows for high fidelity and high speed measurements of a large number of OAM states without significant increase in experimental resources. The first scheme experimentally demonstrates a compact and practical device to measure the OAM spectrum. I report a fidelity of -21.3 dB for 5 different OAM states. The second scheme extends the first, but uses non-demolition measurements to iteratively test for specific OAM values. While this increases experimental complexity, it allows for the detection of an arbitrarily large OAM value from a single photon. I also discuss details of each technique investigate the affects of misalignment on the OAM spectrum. In the remaining part, I discuss my novel generalized quantum Zeno interrogation. The original quantum Zeno interrogation is limited to the two-dimensional state of a single object; while the generalized version has the ability to non-destructively probe the quantum state a set of objects, and deterministically imprint that information onto a single photon using the OAM degree of freedom.
Abstract Adopting quantum resources for parameter estimation discloses the possibility to realize quantum sensors operating at a sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit. Such an approach promises to reach the fundamental Heisenberg scaling as a function of the employed resources N in the estimation process. Although previous experiments demonstrated precision scaling approaching Heisenberg-limited performances, reaching such a regime for a wide range of N remains hard to accomplish. Here, we show a method that suitably allocates the available resources permitting them to reach the same power law of Heisenberg scaling without any prior information on the parameter. We demonstrate experimentally such an advantage in measuring a rotation angle. We quantitatively verify sub-standard quantum limit performances for a considerable range of N (O(30,000)) by using single-photon states with high-order orbital angular momentum, achieving an error reduction, in terms of the obtained variance, >10 dB below the standard quantum limit. Such results can be applied to different scenarios, opening the way to the optimization of resources in quantum sensing.