Metasurface-enabled quantum holograms with hybrid entanglement

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how metasurfaces can generate hybrid entangled quantum holograms, enabling advanced quantum communication and fundamental quantum physics exploration through polarization control and holographic erasure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel metasurface-based method to create polarization-hologram hybrid entanglement and demonstrates quantum holographic erasure, expanding quantum information capabilities.

Findings

Successful generation of polarization-hologram hybrid entanglement.

Observation of quantum holographic erasure through polarization measurement.

Potential applications in quantum communication and anti-counterfeiting.

Abstract

Metasurfaces, with their capability to control all possible dimensions of light, have become integral to quantum optical applications, including quantum state generation, operation, and tomography. In this work, we utilize a metasurface to generate polarization-hologram hybrid entanglement between a signal-idler photon pair to construct a quantum hologram. The properties of the quantum hologram can be revealed by collapsing the polarization degree of freedom of the idler photon, inducing interference between two holographic states of the signal photon, as a meaningful and selective erasure of the holographic content. In contrary, interference disappears when the idler photon is detected without observing polarization. This process can be further interpreted as a quantum holographic eraser, where the erasing action is visualized with erased contents in holograms. Our construction of polarization-hologram hybrid entangled state with metasurfaces will be useful for quantum communication with enhanced robustness, anti-counterfeiting applications through the additional quantum degrees of freedom, and as an emerging platform for exploring fundamental quantum concepts for entanglement and non-locality.