We review recent theoretical and experimental works where are proposed and demonstrated how to use photon pairs created by spontaneous parametric down-conversion to generate entangled states of D-dimensional quantum systems, or qudits. This is the first demonstration of high-dimensional entanglement based on the intrinsic transverse momentum entanglement of the type-II down-converted photons. The qudit space is defined by an aperture made up of an opaque screen with D slits (paths), placed in the arms of the twin photons. By manipulating the pump beam profile we can prepare different entangled states of these possible paths. We focus our attention on an important case for applications in quantum information: the maximally entangled states. Experimental results for qudits with D=4 and D=8 are shown and measuring a two-photon conditional interference, we also demonstrate the nonclassical character of the correlations.
Generalized Hermite–Gauss decomposition of the two-photon state produced by spontaneous parametric down conversion