Generating arbitrary non-separable states with polarization and orbital angular momentum of light

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental method to generate and verify arbitrary non-separable states of light using polarization and orbital angular momentum, with potential applications in quantum communication and sensing.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a novel experimental approach to create and verify arbitrary non-separable states of light combining polarization and OAM.

Findings

Successful generation of arbitrary non-separable states

Verification of non-separability via polarization and entropy measurements

Potential transfer to quantum domain for communication and sensing

Abstract

We demonstrate an experimental method to generate arbitrary non-separable states of light using polarization and orbital angular momentum (OAM) degrees of freedom. We observe the intensity distribution corresponding to OAM modes of the light beam by projecting the non-separable state into different polarization states. We further verify the presence of non-separability by measuring the degree of polarization and linear entropy. This classical non-separability can be easily transferred to the quantum domain using spontaneous parametric down-conversion for applications in quantum communication and quantum sensing.