Enhanced detection techniques of orbital angular momentum states in the classical and quantum regimes

Implementing quantum walks using orbital angular momentum of classical light.

We present an implementation scheme for a quantum walk in the orbital angular momentum space of a laser beam. The scheme makes use of a ring interferometer, containing a quarter-wave plate and a q plate. This setup enables one to perform an arbitrary number of quantum walk steps. In addition, the classical nature of the implementation scheme makes it possible to observe the quantum walk evoluti...

Polarization control of single photon quantum orbital angular momentum states.

The orbital angular momentum of photons, being defined in an infinite-dimensional discrete Hilbert space, offers a promising resource for high-dimensional quantum information protocols in quantum optics. The biggest obstacle to its wider use is presently represented by the limited set of tools available for its control and manipulation. Here, we introduce and test experimentally a series of sim...

Quantum Formulation of Fractional Orbital Angular Momentum

The quantum theory of rotation angles (S. M. Barnett and D. T. Pegg, Phys. Rev. A, 41, 3427-3425 (1990)) is generalised to noninteger values of the orbital angular momentum. This requires the introduction of an additional parameter, the orientation of a phase discontinuity associated with fractional values of the orbital angular momentum. We apply our formalism to the propagation of light modes...

Novel Detection of Optical Orbital Angular Momentum

Chiral orbital-angular momentum in the surface states of Bi2Se3.

We performed angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) experiments with circularly polarized light and first-principles density functional calculation with spin-orbit coupling to study surface states of a topological insulator Bi2Se3. We observed circular dichroism (CD) as large as 30% in the ARPES data with upper and lower Dirac cones showing opposite signs in CD. The observed CD is attributed to t...