Entanglement of the orbital angular momentum states of the photon pairs generated in a hot atomic ensemble

Abstract

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate that the photon pairs generated via spontaneous four-wave mixing in a hot atomic ensemble are in entangled orbital angular momentum (OAM) states. The density matrix of the OAM states of the photon pair is reconstructed, from which the fidelity to the maximal entangled state and the concurrence are estimated to be about 0.89 and 0.81, respectively. The experimental result also suggests the existence of the entanglement concerned with spatial degrees of freedom between the hot atomic ensemble and the Stokes photon.