Wigner Distribution of Twisted Photons
Abstract
We present the first experimental characterization of the azimuthal Wigner distribution of a photon. Our protocol fully characterizes the transverse structure of a photon in conjugate bases of orbital angular momentum (OAM) and azimuthal angle. We provide a test of our protocol by characterizing pure superpositions and incoherent mixtures of OAM modes in a seven-dimensional space. The time required for performing measurements in our scheme scales only linearly with the dimension size of the state under investigation. This time scaling makes our technique suitable for quantum information applications involving a large number of OAM states.
Additional Information
© 2016 American Physical Society. (Received 4 December 2015; published 1 April 2016) We gratefully acknowledge Ebrahim Karimi for providing the q-plate used in our experiment. This work was supported by the US Office of Naval Research. In addition, RWB acknowledges support through the Canada Excellence Research Chairs program. OSML acknowledges support through CONACyT and the Mexican Secretaria de Educacion Publica (SEP).Attached Files
Published - PhysRevLett.116.130402
Submitted - 1512.01577.pdf
Supplemental Material - Supplementary_PRL_v3.pdf
Files
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 96846
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190628-110705451
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
- Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP)
- Created
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2019-06-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-02-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field