Deterministic distribution of orbital angular momentum multiplexed continuous-variable entanglement and quantum steering

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing provides an efficient method to improve data-carrying capacity in various quantum communication protocols. It is a precondition to distribute OAM multiplexed quantum resources in quantum channels for implementing quantum communication. However, quantum steering of OAM multiplexed optical fields and the effect of channel noise on OAM multiplexed quantum resources remain unclear. Here, we generate OAM multiplexed continuous-variable (CV) entangled states and distribute them in lossy or noisy channels. We show that the decoherence property of entanglement and quantum steering of the OAM multiplexed states carrying topological charges l = 1 and l = 2 are the same as that of the Gaussian mode with l = 0 in lossy and noisy channels. The sudden death of entanglement and quantum steering of high-order OAM multiplexed states is observed in the presence of excess noise. Our results demonstrate the feasibility to realize high data-carrying capacity quantum information processing by utilizing OAM multiplexed CV entangled states.