1,499 research outputs found
The Role of Spatial Coherence and Orbital Angular Momentum of Light in Astronomy
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light is potentially interesting for
astronomical study of rotating objects such as black holes, but the effect of
reduced spatial coherence of astronomical light sources such as stars is
largely unknown. In a lab-scale experiment, we find that the detected OAM
spectrum depends strongly on the position of the light-twisting object along
the line of sight. We develop a simple intuitive model to predict the influence
of reduced spatial coherence in astronomical observations, and discuss
line-of-sight and intensity issues.Comment: updated versio
Four-photon orbital angular momentum entanglement
Quantum entanglement shared between more than two particles is essential to
foundational questions in quantum mechanics, and upcoming quantum information
technologies. So far, up to 14 two-dimensional qubits have been entangled, and
an open question remains if one can also demonstrate entanglement of
higher-dimensional discrete properties of more than two particles. A promising
route is the use of the photon orbital angular momentum (OAM), which enables
implementation of novel quantum information protocols, and the study of
fundamentally new quantum states. To date, only two of such multidimensional
particles have been entangled albeit with ever increasing dimensionality. Here
we use pulsed spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) to produce photon
quadruplets that are entangled in their OAM, or transverse-mode degrees of
freedom; and witness genuine multipartite Dicke-type entanglement. Apart from
addressing foundational questions, this could find applications in quantum
metrology, imaging, and secret sharing.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Observation of OAM sidebands due to optical reflection
We investigate how the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a paraxial light
beam is affected upon reflection at a planar interface. Theoretically, the
unavoidable angular spread of the (paraxial) beam leads to OAM sidebands which
are found to be already significant for modest beam spread (0.05). In analogy
to the polarization Fresnel coefficients we develop a theory based upon spatial
Fresnel coefficients; this allows straightforward prediction of the strength of
the sidebands. We confirm this by experiment.Comment: 5 page
Circular dichroism of cholesteric polymers and the orbital angular momentum of light
We explore experimentally if the light's orbital angular momentum (OAM)
interacts with chiral nematic polymer films. Specifically, we measure the
circular dichroism of such a material using light beams with different OAM. We
investigate the case of strongly focussed, non-paraxial light beams, where the
spatial and polarization degrees of freedom are coupled. Within the
experimental accuracy, we cannot find any influence of the OAM on the circular
dichroism of the cholesteric polymer.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure
An experiment on the shifts of reflected C-lines
An experiment is described that tests theoretical predictions on how C-lines
incident obliquely on a surface behave on reflection. C-lines in a polarised
wave are the analogues of the optical vortices carried by a complex scalar
wave, which is the usual model for describing light and other electromagnetic
waves. The centre of a laser beam that carries a (degenerate) C-line is shifted
on reflection by the well-known Goos-H\"anchen and Imbert-Fedorov effects, but
the C-line itself splits into two, both of which are shifted longitudinally and
laterally; their shifts are different from that of the beam centre. To maximise
the effect to be measured, internal reflection in a glass prism close to the
critical angle was used. In a simple situation like this two recently published
independent theories of C-line reflection overlap and it is shown that their
predictions are identical. The measured differences in the lateral shifts of
the two reflected C-lines are compared with theoretical expectations over a
range of incidence angles.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure
Full-field quantum correlations of spatially entangled photons
Spatially entangled twin photons allow the study of high-dimensional
entanglement, and the Laguerre-Gauss modes are the most commonly used basis to
discretize the single photon mode spaces. In this basis, to date only the
azimuthal degree of freedom has been investigated experimentally due to its
fundamental and experimental simplicity. We show that the full spatial
entanglement is indeed accessible experimentally, i.e., we have found
practicable radial detection modes with negligible cross correlations. This
allows us to demonstrate hybrid azimuthal -- radial quantum correlations in a
Hilbert space with more than 100 dimensions per photon.Comment: 6 page
Approximate Minimum Diameter
We study the minimum diameter problem for a set of inexact points. By
inexact, we mean that the precise location of the points is not known. Instead,
the location of each point is restricted to a contineus region (\impre model)
or a finite set of points (\indec model). Given a set of inexact points in
one of \impre or \indec models, we wish to provide a lower-bound on the
diameter of the real points.
In the first part of the paper, we focus on \indec model. We present an
time
approximation algorithm of factor for finding minimum diameter
of a set of points in dimensions. This improves the previously proposed
algorithms for this problem substantially.
Next, we consider the problem in \impre model. In -dimensional space, we
propose a polynomial time -approximation algorithm. In addition, for
, we define the notion of -separability and use our algorithm for
\indec model to obtain -approximation algorithm for a set of
-separable regions in time
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