Room-temperature on-chip orbital angular momentum single-photon sources

Abstract In quantum optics, orbital angular momentum (OAM) is very promising to achieve high-dimensional quantum states due to the nature of infinite and discrete eigenvalues, which is quantized by the topological charge of l. Here, a heralded single-photon source with switchable OAM modes is proposed and demonstrated on silicon chip. At room-temperature, the heralded single photons with 11 OAM modes (l=2~6, -6~-1) have been successfully generated and switched through thermo-optical effect. We believe that such an integrated quantum source with multiple OAM modes and operating at room-temperature would provide a practical platform for high-dimensional quantum information processing. Moreover, our proposed architecture can also be extended to other material systems to further improve the performance of OAM quantum source.

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Orbital angular momentum of photons and the entanglement of Laguerre–Gaussian modes

Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.2015.0442 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 375 (2087) ◽

pp. 20150442 ◽

Cited By ~ 59

Author(s):

Mario Krenn ◽

Mehul Malik ◽

Manuel Erhard ◽

Anton Zeilinger

Keyword(s):

Angular Momentum ◽

Orbital Angular Momentum ◽

Single Photon ◽

Fundamental Property ◽

Single Photons ◽

Open Questions ◽

Quantum Protocols ◽

Complex Forms ◽

Extensive Body ◽

Quantum Phenomena

The identification of orbital angular momentum (OAM) as a fundamental property of a beam of light nearly 25 years ago has led to an extensive body of research around this topic. The possibility that single photons can carry OAM has made this degree of freedom an ideal candidate for the investigation of complex quantum phenomena and their applications. Research in this direction has ranged from experiments on complex forms of quantum entanglement to the interaction between light and quantum states of matter. Furthermore, the use of OAM in quantum information has generated a lot of excitement, as it allows for encoding large amounts of information on a single photon. Here, we explain the intuition that led to the first quantum experiment with OAM 15 years ago. We continue by reviewing some key experiments investigating fundamental questions on photonic OAM and the first steps to applying these properties in novel quantum protocols. At the end, we identify several interesting open questions that could form the subject of future investigations with OAM. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Optical orbital angular momentum’.

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Single Photon Orbital Angular Momentum Transfer Based on Information Processing Technology

Journal of Physics Conference Series ◽

10.1088/1742-6596/1574/1/012117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1574 ◽

pp. 012117

Author(s):

Hongyu Lin ◽

Xiaoqian Wang ◽

Zhihai Yao

Keyword(s):

Angular Momentum ◽

Information Processing ◽

Momentum Transfer ◽

Orbital Angular Momentum ◽

Single Photon ◽

Processing Technology ◽

Angular Momentum Transfer

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On-chip discrimination of orbital angular momentum of light with plasmonic nanoslits

Nanoscale ◽

10.1039/c5nr07374j ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 2227-2233 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Shengtao Mei ◽

Kun Huang ◽

Hong Liu ◽

Fei Qin ◽

Muhammad Q. Mehmood ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Angular Momentum ◽

Orbital Angular Momentum ◽

Optical Communication ◽

Communication System ◽

Degree Of Freedom ◽

System Capacity ◽

Optical Communication System ◽

On Chip

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light can be taken as an independent and orthogonal degree of freedom for multiplexing in an optical communication system, potentially improving the system capacity to hundreds of Tbits per second.

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