Quantum entanglement of the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons using metamaterials

Abstract

Metamaterials constructed from deep subwavelength building blocks have been used to demonstrate phenomena ranging from negative refractive index and ε-near-zero to cloaking, emulations of general relativity, and superresolution imaging. More recently, metamaterials have been suggested as a new platform for quantum optics. We present the use of a dielectric metasurface to generate entanglement between the spin and orbital angular momentum of photons. We demonstrate the generation of the four Bell states on a single photon by using the geometric phase that arises from the photonic spin-orbit interaction and subsequently show nonlocal correlations between two photons that interacted with the metasurface. Our results show that metamaterials are suitable for the generation and manipulation of entangled photon states, introducing the area of quantum optics metamaterials.

Analog Optical Spatial Differentiators Based on Dielectric Metasurfaces

“…Metamaterials composed of artificial subwavelength structures have exhibited flexible modulation on phase, amplitude, and polarization of electromagnetic waves Metasurfaces, usually regarded as the 2D version of metamaterials, are also of the strong capabilities to manipulate waves and have already generated a great number of promising optical functionalities such as imaging, holography, spectroscopy, and even quantum entanglement . Its monolithic design will afford the special convenience to build optical computational devices.…”

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Metamaterials composed of artificial subwavelength structures have exhibited flexible modulation on phase, amplitude, and polarization of electromagnetic waves [3,4] Metasurfaces, usually regarded as the 2D version of metamaterials, are also of the strong capabilities to manipulate waves and have already generated a great number of promising optical functionalities such as imaging, [5][6][7][8] holography, [9][10][11] spectroscopy, [12][13][14] and even quantum entanglement. [15][16][17] Its monolithic design will afford the special convenience to build optical computational devices. The first metasurface-based analog optical spatial computing device was proposed by Silva et al in 2014. [18] They adopted two system configurations: 4-F optical system where subwavelength artificial microstructures are used as the spatial frequency filter and a single multilayer film engineered to satisfy some desired spatial Green's function.

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Quantum metasurface for multiphoton interference and state reconstruction

“…The metasurfaces provide a freedom to tailor the light interference by coherently selecting and mixing different components on a sub-wavelength scale, enabling polarization-spatial conversion [4,[7][8][9][10][11][12] and spin-orbital transformation [13]. Such capabilities motivated multiple applications for the regime of classical light, yet the metasurfaces have a potential to emerge as essential components for quantum photonics [14][15][16][17].The key manifestations of quantum light are associated with non-classical multi-photon interference, which is an enabling phenomenon for the transformation and measurement of quantum states. Conventionally, manipulation of multiphoton states is performed through a sequence of beamsplitting optical elements, each realizing quantum interference [18][19][20].…”

“…The metasurfaces provide a freedom to tailor the light interference by coherently selecting and mixing different components on a sub-wavelength scale, enabling polarization-spatial conversion [4,[7][8][9][10][11][12] and spin-orbital transformation [13]. Such capabilities motivated multiple applications for the regime of classical light, yet the metasurfaces have a potential to emerge as essential components for quantum photonics [14][15][16][17].…”

Engineering Nanoparticles with Pure High-Order Multipole Scattering

“…The latter is highly beneficial due to low, almost negligible absorption losses, compatibility with well-established semiconductor fabrication processes, and abundance of different optical modes (and corresponding resonances) even for simple * zenin@mci.sdu.dk † a.b.evlyukhin@daad-alumni.de symmetric shapes of dielectric nanoparticles [3][4][5]. The above advantages led to a broad variety of applications utilizing dielectric nanoparticles, including light manipulation with metasurfaces [6][7][8][9][10][11][12], color printing [13,14], lasing [15,16], biosensing [17][18][19], strong coupling [20][21][22][23], and applications within quantum optics and topological photonics [24][25][26].…”