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arXiv:quant-ph/0108101 · Physical Review A

Conservation of orbital angular momentum in stimulated down-conversion

D. P. Caetano, Marcelo Pereira de Almeida, P. H. Souto Ribeiro, J. A. O. Huguenin, B. Coutinho dos Santos, Antonio Zelaquett Khoury

Published Oct 23, 2002• 81 citations
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Abstract

We report on an experiment demonstrating the conservation of the orbital angular momentum in stimulated down-conversion. It has been demonstrated that the orbital angular momentum is not transferred to the individual beams of the spontaneous down-conversion. It is also known that it is conserved when twin photons are taken individually. We observe the conservation law for an individual beam of the down-conversion through cavity-free stimulated emission.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.66.041801

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We report on an experiment demonstrating the conservation of the orbital angular momentum in stimulated down-conversion. It has been demonstrated that the orbital angular momentum is not transferred to the individual beams of the spontaneous down-conversion. It is also known that it is conserved when twin photons are taken individually. We observe the conservation law for an individual beam of the down-conversion through cavity-free stimulated emission.
Experimental observation of the conservation of orbital angular momentum in spontaneous parametric down-conversion has been theoretically attributed to phase-matching, transfer of plane-wave spectrum from pump beam to down-converted beams. However, according to quantum mechanics, the conservation of angular momentum arises from rotational symmetry of the Hamiltonian describing the studied physical process. Recently, experimental evidence has been found which shows that non-conservation of orbital angular momentum can occur in spontaneous parametric down-conversion due to rotational asymmetry of the Hamiltonian. In this paper, we theoretically show that all reported experimental results of conservation of orbital angular momentum in spontaneous parametric down-conversion are determined only by the Hamiltonian symmetry, and not by phase matching, transfer of plane-wave spectrum.
Identifying conservation laws is central to every subfield of physics, as they illuminate the underlying symmetries and fundamental principles. A prime example can be found in quantum optics: the conservation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) during spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) enables the generation of a photon pair with entangled OAM. In this Letter, we report on the observation of OAM conservation in SPDC pumped on the single-photon level by a preceding SPDC process. We implement this cascaded down-conversion scheme in free space, without waveguide confinement, and thereby set the stage for experiments on the direct generation of multiphoton high-dimensional entanglement using all degrees of freedom of light.
States of light that are simultaneously eigenstates of orbital, intrinsic, and total angular momentum are found and eigenstates describing pairs of photons from spontaneous parametric down-conversion reveal classes of photon conversion with angular momentum conservation and cases where the initial angular momentum from the pump laser beam is shared between the converted photons and the generating medium. These angular momentum conservation laws open up a wide range of applications to be explored.
Conservation laws are at the heart of our natural scientific understanding, as they dictate why certain phenomena do or do not exist in nature. In the realm of nonlinear optics — where light-matter interactions enable the generation of photon pairs — these principles are also essential. In the common interpretation of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), the conservation of momenta is attributed to the transfer of the well-defined linear or orbital angular momenta (OAM) of the single pump photon to the generated photon pair [1], [2]. However, due to the low conversion efficiencies, this conservation rule has only been tested with a strong coherent laser pumping the process. Here, we show for the first time that the OAM of a single pump photon is indeed conserved and that an OAM quanta of up to 2 is transferred to the generated photon pair.
We study the two-photon detection amplitude of the down-converted beams in spontaneous parametric down-conversion when the physical variable of orbital angular momentum is involved, taking into account both conservation and non-conservation of angular momentum. Agreeing with experimental observations, our theoretical calculation shows that spatial structure of the two-photon detection amplitude of the down-converted beams carries important information about conservation or non-conservation of orbital angular momentum in spontaneous parametric down-conversion.
Orbital angular momentum exchange, both in cavity free stimulated parametric down conversion and in an optical parametric oscillator, is studied. In both cases, the conditions for parametric amplification are discussed in terms of the orbital angular momentum exchange between the interacting fields. It is shown that in cavity free parametric down conversion, parametric amplification is conditioned to conserve orbital angular momentum. However, for parametric oscillation, cavity and anisotropy effects play a crucial role in the orbital angular momentum exchange between the interacting fields.