No Arabic abstract
Spatial modes of light can potentially carry a vast amount of information, making them promising candidates for both classical and quantum communication. However, the distribution of such modes over large distances remains difficult. Intermodal coupling complicates their use with common fibers, while free-space transmission is thought to be strongly influenced by atmospheric turbulence. Here we show the transmission of orbital angular momentum modes of light over a distance of 143 kilometers between two Canary Islands, which is 50 times greater than the maximum distance achieved previously. As a demonstration of the transmission quality, we use superpositions of these modes to encode a short message. At the receiver, an artificial neural network is used for distinguishing between the different twisted light superpositions. The algorithm is able to identify different mode superpositions with an accuracy of more than 80% up to the third mode order, and decode the transmitted message with an error rate of 8.33%. Using our data, we estimate that the distribution of orbital angular momentum entanglement over more than 100 kilometers of free space is feasible. Moreover, the quality of our free-space link can be further improved by the use of state-of-the-art adaptive optics systems.
Classical structured light with controlled polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of electromagnetic waves has varied applications in optical trapping, bio-sensing, optical communications and quantum simulations. The classical electromagnetic theory of such structured light beams and pulses have advanced significantly over the last two decades. However, a framework for the quantum density of spin and OAM for single-photons remains elusive. Here, we develop a theoretical framework and put forth the concept of quantum structured light for space-time wavepackets at the single-photon level. Our work marks a paradigm shift beyond scalar-field theory as well as the paraxial approximation and can be utilized to study the quantum properties of the spin and OAM of all classes of twisted quantum light pulses. We capture the uncertainty in full three-dimensional (3D) projections of vector spin demonstrating their quantum behavior beyond the conventional concept of classical polarization. Even in laser beams with high OAM along the propagation direction, we predict the existence of large OAM quantum fluctuations in the transverse plane which can be verified experimentally. We show that the spin density generates modulated helical texture beyond the paraxial limit and exhibits distinct statistics for Fock-state vs. coherent-state twisted pulses. We introduce the quantum correlator of photon spin density to characterize the nonlocal spin noise providing a rigorous parallel with fermionic spin noise operators. Our work paves the way for quantum spin-OAM physics in twisted single photon pulses and also opens explorations for new phases of light with long-range spin order.
Long-distance entanglement distribution is essential both for foundational tests of quantum physics and scalable quantum networks. Owing to channel loss, however, the previously achieved distance was limited to ~100 km. Here, we demonstrate satellite-based distribution of entangled photon pairs to two locations separated by 1203 km on the Earth, through satellite-to-ground two-downlink with a sum of length varies from 1600 km to 2400 km. We observe a survival of two-photon entanglement and a violation of Bell inequality by 2.37+/-0.09 under strict Einstein locality conditions. The obtained effective link efficiency at 1200 km in this work is over 12 orders of magnitude higher than the direct bidirectional transmission of the two photons through the best commercial telecommunication fibers with a loss of 0.16 dB/km.
As a direct consequence of the no-cloning theorem, the deterministic amplification as in classical communication is impossible for quantum states. This calls for more advanced techniques in a future global quantum network, e.g. for cloud quantum computing. A unique solution is the teleportation of an entangled state, i.e. entanglement swapping, representing the central resource to relay entanglement between distant nodes. Together with entanglement purification and a quantum memory it constitutes a so-called quantum repeater. Since the aforementioned building blocks have been individually demonstrated in laboratory setups only, the applicability of the required technology in real-world scenarios remained to be proven. Here we present a free-space entanglement-swapping experiment between the Canary Islands of La Palma and Tenerife, verifying the presence of quantum entanglement between two previously independent photons separated by 143 km. We obtained an expectation value for the entanglement-witness operator, more than 6 standard deviations beyond the classical limit. By consecutive generation of the two required photon pairs and space-like separation of the relevant measurement events, we also showed the feasibility of the swapping protocol in a long-distance scenario, where the independence of the nodes is highly demanded. Since our results already allow for efficient implementation of entanglement purification, we anticipate our assay to lay the ground for a fully-fledged quantum repeater over a realistic high-loss and even turbulent quantum channel.
Twisted light is light carrying orbital angular momentum. The profile of such a beam is a ring-like structure with a node at the beam axis, where a phase singularity exits. Due to the strong spatial inhomogeneity the mathematical description of twisted-light--matter interaction is non-trivial, in particular close to the phase singularity, where the commonly used dipole-moment approximation cannot be applied. In this paper we show that, if the polarization and the orbital angular momentum of the twisted-light beam have the same sign, a Hamiltonian similar to the dipole-moment approximation can be derived. However, if the signs of polarization and orbital angular momentum differ, in general the magnetic parts of the light beam become of significant importance and an interaction Hamiltonian which only accounts for electric fields, as in the dipole-moment approximation, is inappropriate. We discuss the consequences of these findings for twisted-light excitation of a semiconductor nanostructures, e.g., a quantum dot, placed at the phase singularity.
We present a concrete picture of spoof surface plasmons (SSPs) combined with cavity resonance to clarify the basic mechanism underlying extraordinary light transmission through metal films with subwavelength slits or holes. This picture may indicate a general mechanism of metallic nanostructure optics: When light is incident on a non-planar conducting surface, the free electrons cannot move homogeneously in response to the incident electric field, i.e., their movement can be impeded at the rough parts, forming inhomogeneous charge distributions. The oscillating charges/dipoles then emit photons (similar to Thomson scattering of x rays by oscillating electrons), and the interference between the photons may give rise to anomalous transmission, reflection or scattering.