Twisted photon entanglement through turbulent air across Vienna

Autor(en)

Mario Krenn, Johannes Handsteiner, Matthias Fink, Robert Fickler, Anton Zeilinger

Abstrakt

Photons with a twisted phase front can carry a discrete, in principle, unbounded amount of orbital angular momentum (OAM). The large state space allows for complex types of entanglement, interesting both for quantum communication and for fundamental tests of quantum theory. However, the distribution of such entangled states over large distances was thought to be infeasible due to influence of atmospheric turbulence, indicating a serious limitation on their usefulness. Here we show that it is possible to distribute quantum entanglement encoded in OAM over a turbulent intracity link of 3 km. We confirm quantum entanglement of the first two higherorder levels (with OAM=± 1 and ± 2). They correspond to four additional quantum channels orthogonal to all that have been used in long-distance quantum experiments so far. Therefore, a promising application would be quantum communication with a large alphabet. We also demonstrate that our link allows access to up to 11 quantum channels of OAM. The restrictive factors toward higher numbers are technical limitations that can be circumvented with readily available technologies.

Organisation(en)

Quantenoptik, Quantennanophysik und Quanteninformation

Externe Organisation(en)

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)

Band

112

Seiten

14197-14201

Anzahl der Seiten

5

ISSN

0027-8424

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517574112

Publikationsdatum

11-2015

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103026 Quantenoptik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

General

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/db5f450d-4e87-4bff-9f58-fae3552d3c19