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Quantum Information Transfer from Spin to Orbital Angular Momentum of Photons

2009; American Physical Society; Volume: 103; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.103.013601

1092-0145

Eleonora Nagali, Fabio Sciarrino, Francesco De Martini, Lorenzo Marrucci, Bruno Piccirillo, Ebrahim Karimi, Enrico Santamato,

Quantum optics and atomic interactions

The optical "spin-orbit" coupling occurring in a suitably patterned nonuniform birefringent plate known as `q-plate' allows entangling the polarization of a single photon with its orbital angular momentum (OAM). This process, in turn, can be exploited for building a bidirectional "spin-OAM interface", capable of transposing the quantum information from the spin to the OAM degree of freedom of photons and \textit{vice versa}. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this process by single-photon quantum tomographic analysis. Moreover, we show that two-photon quantum correlations such as those resulting from coalescence interference can be successfully transferred into the OAM degree of freedom.