Transmitting more than 10 bit with a single photon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates encoding over 10 bits of information in a single photon by spatially controlling its position, enabling high-dimensional quantum information processing with a large alphabet size.

Contribution

The work experimentally achieves over 10 bits of mutual information per photon using spatial encoding in a high-dimensional grid, surpassing previous limits.

Findings

Achieved 10.5 bits of mutual information per photon.

Successfully addressed any location in a 9072-position grid.

Demonstrated high-dimensional quantum information encoding.

Abstract

Encoding information in the position of single photons has no known limits, given infinite resources. Using a heralded single-photon source and a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM), we steer single photons to specific positions in a virtual grid on a large-area spatially resolving photon-counting detector (ICCD). We experimentally demonstrate selective addressing any location (symbol) in a 9072 size grid (alphabet) to achieve 10.5 bit of mutual information between the sender and receiver per detected photon. Our results set the stage for very-high-dimensional quantum information processing.