Abstract
Light-carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) has great potential in enhancing the information channel capacity in both classical and quantum optical communications. Long distance optical communication requires the wavelengths of light are situated in the low-loss communication windows, but most quantum memories currently being developed for use in a quantum repeater work at different wavelengths, so a quantum interface to bridge the wavelength gap is necessary. So far, such an interface for OAM-carried light has not been realized yet. Here, we report the first experimental realization of a quantum interface for a heralded single photon carrying OAM using a nonlinear crystal in an optical cavity. The spatial structures of input and output photons exhibit strong similarity. More importantly, single-photon coherence is preserved during up-conversion as demonstrated.
Highlights
Photons are very important information carriers for transferring quantum states between remote physical systems, such as atomic ensembles, ions, and solid-state systems[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] acting as quantum memories[5,6,7,8,9] and quantum information processors[10]
We report the first experimental realization of an orbital angular momentum (OAM) photonic quantum interface by up-converting a heralded OAM-carried single photons from 1560 nm to 525 nm using the cavityenhanced sum frequency generation (SFG)
Three waves are involved in the up-conversion process: one strong pump beam at frequency vp, one signal beam to be converted at frequency vs, and the up-converted beam at frequency vSFG, where the frequencies of the interacting waves satisfy vSFG~vpzvs
Summary
Photons are very important information carriers for transferring quantum states between remote physical systems, such as atomic ensembles, ions, and solid-state systems[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] acting as quantum memories[5,6,7,8,9] and quantum information processors[10]. Light-carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) has stimulated considerable research interest in both classical and quantum optical fields, has exciting applications, including optical manipulation and trapping[11,12], high-precision optical measurements[13,14,15], high-capacity free space and fiber optic communications[16,17], and studies of fundamental quantum physics[18,19,20,21]. A photon in telecom band or in freespace communication window is vital to construct a long-distance high-capacity quantum communication network. Most quantum memories operate in the visible wavelength range[5,6,7,8,9], only few memories can work in telecom band[25]. The signal stored is an attenuated coherent light and has the Gaussian mode
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