Twisted photons: new quantum perspectives in high dimensions

By Manuel Erhard, Robert Fickler, Mario Krenn, Anton Zeilinger. Light: Science & Applications, 2017

611 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Twisted photons can be used as alphabets to encode information beyond one bit per single photon. This ability offers great potential for quantum information tasks, as well as for the investigation of fundamental questions. In this review article, we give a brief overview of the theoretical differences between qubits and higher dimensional systems, qudits, in different quantum information scenarios. We then describe recent experimental developments in this field over the past three years. Finally, we summarize some important experimental and theoretical questions that might be beneficial to understand better in the near future. Photons possessing orbital angular momentum are promising for systems for realizing new quantum information applications. Quantum computing and communications are set to revolutionize information technology, but most systems studied to date are based on qubits —quantum analogs of classical bits that can take one of only two states. Manuel Erhard at the University of Vienna, Austria, and co-workers review progress in higher dimensional systems that use photons with orbital angular momentum, or twisted photons, as ‘qudits’, which can have any number of levels. They look at the advantages of such higher-dimensional systems, which include higher information capacity and greater protection from eavesdropping. The researchers then examine exciting developments in the field in the past two to three years, such as the creation of high-dimensional entanglement and optimal quantum cloning. Finally, they consider future challenges.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cab4684df39e72f025370cd65354f8b9d99da228

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Citations in the corpus

Advances in quantum cryptography (2019, neutral): “[268] M.”
Nonseparable States of Light: From Quantum to Classical (2022, positive): “In quantum optics, there is a characteristic example of such Bell states, the OAM-entangled photon pair, |ψ〉 = 1 √ n ∑ n `=1 |`〉| − `〉 [91].”
Qudits and High-Dimensional Quantum Computing (2020, background): “In addition, photon has many quantum properties such as the orbital angular momentum [9, 52]; frequency-bin [75, 76, 96, 107] and time-bin [73, 78] that can be used to represent a qudit.”
Orbital Angular Momentum States Enabling Fiber-based High-dimensional Quantum Communication (2018, background): “[24] M.”
Photonic quantum information processing: A concise review (2019, background): “The most commonly used mode pairs are orthogonal polarizations or non-overlapping propagation paths, but recently, other degrees of freedom such as transverse spatial, 15–17 frequency mode, 18–21 temporal bin-, 22–25 and temporal mode-23,26–29 encoding are attracting attention.”