- 1Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics and School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
- 2National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
- 3Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
Entanglement, as a crucial feature of quantum systems, is essential for various applications of quantum technologies. High-dimensional entanglement has the potential to encode arbitrary large amount of information and enhance robustness against eavesdropping and quantum cloning. The orbital angular momentum (OAM) entanglement can achieve the high-dimensional entanglement nearly for free stems due to its discrete and theoretically infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. A stringent limitation, however, is that the phase-matching condition limits the entanglement dimension because the coincidence rate decreases significantly for high-order modes. Here we demonstrate relatively flat high-dimensional OAM entanglement based on a spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) from an ultrathin nonlinear lithium niobite crystal. The difference of coincidences between the different-order OAM modes significantly decreases. To further enhance the nonlinear process, this microscale SPDC source will provide a promising and integrated method to generate optimal high-dimensional OAM entanglement.
1 Introduction
Light with a helical phase exp (imϕ), which carries orbital angular momentum (OAM), has attracted close attention in the last few decades and found numerous photonic applications, such as high density data storage [1, 2], optical imaging [3–8], holography [9, 10], astrophysics [11, 12], optical manipulation [13–15] and in the optical interferometer for the detection of gravitational waves [16]. In addition, the OAM of light serves, in a sense, as an “alphabet” that allows information to be encoded into the spatial wavefunction of light. The key motivation is that the OAM has potentially an unlimited number of states [17, 18]. In the classical domain, the OAM can increase the capacity of optical communication links ranging from implementation in fibre [19, 20], over-city links [21] and free-space [22], and can also operate in mm-wave [23]. Actually, each OAM mode can be considered as an individual quantum degree of freedom [24, 25]. Quantum mechanically, the OAM occurs in discrete values of mℏ per photon, where m is in principle an unbounded integer. The OAM opens many promising perspectives for quantum communication and computation [26, 27]. Zeilinger’s group firstly realized the OAM-entangled photon pair [28] and verified that the maximum dimension of the OAM entanglement can reach 10,000 [29], which shows the great potential and novel advantage in the high-dimensional quantum information such as teleportation [30] and quantum communication [31–33]. A spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) process is the most common workhorse for the generation of the OAM-entangled photon pairs [34, 35]. Albeit convenient, this process exhibits several drawbacks. For example, photon pairs generated in this way have a non-uniform OAM distribution, which constrains the increase of dimension [26]. The entanglement property of the OAM states is determined by the overlap between the transverse modes of the pump and photon pairs because the transverse intensity profile of the OAM mode depends on its topological charge m. The dimensionality of the two-photon OAM states can be increased with the use of perfect optical vortex (POV) in the pump because the POV is a class of size-invariant modes [36, 37]. The versatile high-dimensional quantum states are generated by using the structured pump [38–40]. Recently, the entangled OAM photon pairs are generated in the multiple SPDC processes by the path identity [41].
In addition, the non-uniformity of OAM entanglement is also restricted by the longitudinal phase mismatching. High-order OAM modes have the larg phase mismatch, which leads to the low generation efficiency. This restriction can be improved by utilizing the microscale flat-optics quantum source [42]. Here we have achieved relatively flat high-dimensional OAM entanglement in an ultrathin film of lithium niobite (LN) via the SPDC, which is impossible in a single bulk source. Being free from the phase matching constraints, the ultrathin source can be fabricated of any materials with large second-order susceptibility. Our method provides a new platform of high-dimensional OAM entanglement on which to investigate fundamental quantum effects but it also has practical applications.
2 Theory
In the paraxial approximation, photons carrying OAM can be described by a Laguerre-Gaussian mode
where
where
where
where
where zR is the Rayleigh range of the mode
FIGURE 1. (A) The intensity and phase for OAM |m| = 1 and |m| = 5. High-dimensional OAM entanglement from the type-0 SPDC in a thick (B) and ultrathin (C) nonlinear LN crystal orthogonal to the pump (D) and (E) is the simulated spiral spectrum of 11-dimensional OAM entanglement in the nonlinear LN crystal with length of L = 0.6 mm and L = 6 μm respectively. The pump is a Gaussian mode m = 0. The coincidences of the different OAM state are normalized by the coincidence at OAM m = 0.
3 Experimental results
As the experimental setup shown in Figure 2A, we use an x-cut ultrathin film of MgO-doped LN on a fused silica substrate as a nonlinear medium. The LN ultrathin slice had a thickness of ∼6 μm. The pump source is a femtosecond (fs) pulsed laser at a central wavelength of 405 nm, with a pulse duration of ∼140 fs and a repetition rate of ∼80 MHz to create photon pairs at a degenerate wavelength of 810 nm by the SPDC. Benefiting from the largest element d33 of the nonlinear susceptibility tensor, the polarization of the pump fs laser is oriented along the z axis of the ultrathin LN film. Under the condition of type-0 degenerate collinear phase matching, down-conversion photon pairs have the same polarization. The 10 nm narrow bandwidth interference filters (centred at the wavelength of 810 nm) are used to improve the spectral purity of the correlated photon pairs and to block the remaining pump.
FIGURE 2. (A) The setup used to detect SPDC from the x-cut ultrathin LN film. The pump power is 250 mw. HWP: halfwave plate, BS: beam splitter, L1 and L2: lens (B) The coincidence rate of the fundamental mode (m = 0) versus the pump polarization direction, for the emission polarized along z (blue squares, red fit) and along y (green triangles). θ is the angle between the pump polarization and the y axis. The coincidence time is 1s.
To confirm that the SPDC was mediated by the d33 element of the nonlinear susceptibility tensor, with the pump, signal, and idler photons all polarized along the z axis, we have measured the polarization dependence of the coincidence count, as shown in Figure 2B. The coincidence count depends on the angle θ between the pump polarization and the y axis as sin2θ (blue squares, red fitting curve) and reaches the maximum value only when the signal and idler photons are polarized along the z axis. In contrast, for the emission polarized along the y axis, almost no real coincidences were observed (green circles). Then we use two separate q-plates to transform the incoming field to a fundamental Gaussian mode, which is the unique mode that can be coupled into the single mode fibers, for measuring the OAM of the photon pairs. In the collinear configuration, OAM is conserved in the SPDC, hence we expect the OAMs of the signal and idler photons to be anticorrelated, i.e., the coincidence count is high only when ms = −mi. Figure 3 shows the measured coincidence counts for different combinations of signal and idler photon modes. For each combination the polarization-dependent coincidence counts verifies that the correlated photon pairs are generated from the ultrathin LN by the SPDC. Figure 4 shows the spiral spectrum of the 11-dimensional OAM entanglement and it becomes relatively flat comparing with thick nonlinear crystal. The measured coincidence of the high-order OAM state is lower comparing with the theoretical simulation because the collection efficiency decreases with the increment of the OAM sate. In addition, we observe that the SPDC of ultrathin crystal has better robustness for the position of the pump. When the crystal shift 1 mm from the focus of the pump, the decrease of the maximum coincidence counts for difference mode of photon pairs is about 5%.
FIGURE 3. The coincidence rate versus the pump polarization direction for different mode combinations of the signal and idler photons from the SPDC. θ is the angle between the pump polarization and the y axis. The coincidence time is 1s. The insets are the intensity distributions for corresponded OAM.
FIGURE 4. The measured spiral spectrum of 11-dimensional OAM entanglement from the SPDC in the ultrathin LN film. The coincidence time is 1s.
4 Conclusion
In conclusion, we have demonstrated the relatively flat high-dimensional OAM entanglement based on the SPDC in the ultrathin LN crystal which allows large longitudinal phase mismatching and decreases the difference of coincidence rate between the different OAM mode. This state might be required for quantum experiment. Although we use the highest nonlinear component available in LN, but the efficiency remained much lower than for phase-matched SPDC in a macroscopic crystal. The generation efficiency can be optimised by using the nonlinear material with the giant second-harmonic generation [45]. Recently, metasurfaces offer an ultracompact and versatile platform for enhancing nonlinear optical processes by designing Bound State in the Continuum (BIC) resonances, which support a high confinement of the optical field within the nonlinear material [46, 47]. Then SPDC efficiency can be dramatically increased when the signal and idler photons are supported by BIC resonances [48] to generate high-dimensional hyperentanglement in the frequency and OAM regimes for increasing the quantum information capacity.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.
Author contributions
FD, YL, and H-TW designed experiments, FD performed the theoretical simulations FD dominantly and MW assistantly carried out experiments and analyzed data. FD, YL, and H-TW wrote the manuscript. YL and H-TW. planned and supervised the project. All authors discussed the results.
Funding
This work was supported financially by the National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFA0705000, 2019YFA0308700, 2020YFA0309500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12074197, 12074196, 11922406). The authors would like to thank the support by Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
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Keywords: orbital angular momentum, quantum entanglement, high-dimensional entanglement, nonlinear film, phase matching
Citation: Dai F, Huang S-Y, Wang M, Tu C, Li Y and Wang H-T (2022) High-dimensional orbital angular momentum entanglement from an ultrathin nonlinear film. Front. Phys. 10:971360. doi: 10.3389/fphy.2022.971360
Received: 17 June 2022; Accepted: 15 July 2022;
Published: 15 August 2022.
Edited by:
Carlo Ottaviani, University of York, United KingdomReviewed by:
Gustavo Cañas, University of the Bío Bío, ChileYijie Shen, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2022 Dai, Huang, Wang, Tu, Li and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Yongnan Li, liyongnan@nankai.edu.cn; Hui-Tian Wang, htwang@nju.edu.cn