Orbital angular momentum entanglement

• Main Author: Romero, Mary Jacquiline Romero
• Published: University of Glasgow 2012
• Subjects: 521; QC Physics
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.564101

Entanglement in higher dimensions is an attractive concept that is a chal- lenge to realise experimentally. To this end, the entanglement of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons holds promise. The OAM state-space is discrete and theoretically unbounded. In the work that follows, we investi- gate various aspects of OAM entanglement. We show how the correlations in OAM and its conjugate variable, angular position, are determined by phase- matching and the shape of the pump beam in spontaneous parametric down- conversion. We implement tests of quantum mechanics which have been previously done for other variables. We show the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox for OAM and angle, supporting the incompatibility of quantum me- chanics with locality and realism. We demonstrate violations of Bell-type inequalities, thereby discounting local hidden variables for describing the correlations we observe. We show the Hardy paradox using OAM, again highlighting the nonlocal nature of quantum mechanics. We demonstrate violations of Leggett-type inequalities, thereby discounting nonlocal hidden variables for describing correlations. Lastly, we have looked into the entan- glement of topological vortex structures formed from a special superposition of OAM modes and show violations of Bell-type inequalities confined to a finite, isolated volume.