Synthesis and Analysis of Entangled Photonic Qubits in Spatial-Parity Space

Abstract

We present the novel embodiment of a photonic qubit that makes use of one continuous spatial degree of freedom of a single photon and relies on the the parity of the photon's transverse spatial distribution. Using optical spontaneous parametric downconversion to produce photon pairs, we demonstrate the controlled generation of entangled-photon states in this new space. Specifically, two Bell states, and a continuum of their superpositions, are generated by simple manipulation of a classical parameter, the optical-pump spatial parity, and not by manipulation of the entangled photons themselves. An interferometric device, isomorphic in action to a polarizing beam splitter, projects the spatial-parity states onto an even--odd basis. This new physical realization of photonic qubits could be used as a foundation for future experiments in quantum information processing.

6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (1)

• Experimental Violation of Bell's Inequality in Spatial-Parity Space

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• Stable Mode Sorting by Two-Dimensional Parity of Photonic Transverse Spatial States
• Generation and characterization of discrete spatial entanglement in multimode nonlinear waveguides
• Polarization-based control of spin-orbit vector modes of light in biphoton interference
• Nonlocality in Continuous-Variable Quantum Networks