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Optimal quantum cloning of orbital angular momentum photon qubits through Hong–Ou–Mandel coalescence

Nature Photonics volume 3, pages 720–723 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light, associated with a helical structure of the wavefunction, has great potential in quantum photonics, as it allows a higher dimensional quantum space to be attached to each photon1,2. Hitherto, however, the use of OAM has been hindered by difficulties in its manipulation. Here, by making use of the recently demonstrated spin-OAM information transfer tools3,4, we report the first observation of the Hong–Ou–Mandel coalescence5 of two incoming photons having non-zero OAM into the same outgoing mode of a beamsplitter. The coalescence can be switched on and off by varying the input OAM state of the photons. Such an effect has then been used to carry out the 1 → 2 universal optimal quantum cloning of OAM-encoded qubits6,7,8, using the symmetrization technique already developed for polarization9,10. These results are shown to be scalable to quantum spaces of arbitrary dimensions, even combining different degrees of freedom of the photons.

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Figure 1: Experimental setup for demonstrating the Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect and for implementing OAM quantum cloning.
Figure 2: Experimental Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) effect with OAM.
Figure 3: Experimental shrunk Bloch sphere of the OAM cloned qubits in the subspace o2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, 00185, Italy

    Eleonora Nagali, Linda Sansoni, Fabio Sciarrino & Francesco De Martini

  2. Istituto Nazionale di Ottica Applicata, Firenze, 50125, Italy

    Fabio Sciarrino

  3. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, via della Lungara 10, Roma, 00165, Italy

    Francesco De Martini

  4. Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche, Universitá di Napoli ‘Federico II’, Compl. Univ. di Monte S. Angelo, Napoli, 80126, Italy

    Lorenzo Marrucci, Bruno Piccirillo, Ebrahim Karimi & Enrico Santamato

  5. CNR-INFM Coherentia, Compl. Univ. di Monte S. Angelo, Napoli, 80126, Italy

    Lorenzo Marrucci

  6. Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze Fisiche della Materia, Napoli

    Bruno Piccirillo & Enrico Santamato

Authors
  1. Eleonora Nagali
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  2. Linda Sansoni
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  3. Fabio Sciarrino
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  4. Francesco De Martini
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Contributions

E.N., L.S., F.S., F.D.M., L.M. and E.S. conceived and designed the experiments. E.N., L.S. and F.S. performed the experiments. E.N., L.S. and F.S. analysed the data. L.M., B.P., E.K. and E.S. contributed materials. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Fabio Sciarrino or Lorenzo Marrucci.

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Nagali, E., Sansoni, L., Sciarrino, F. et al. Optimal quantum cloning of orbital angular momentum photon qubits through Hong–Ou–Mandel coalescence. Nature Photon 3, 720–723 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.214

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