38 research outputs found
Laser-directed hierarchical assembly of liquid crystal defects and control of optical phase singularities
Topological defect lines are ubiquitous and important in a wide variety of fascinating phenomena and theories in many fields ranging from materials science to early-universe cosmology, and to engineering of laser beams. However, they are typically hard to control in a reliable manner. Here we describe facile erasable “optical drawing” of self-assembled defect clusters in liquid crystals. These quadrupolar defect clusters, stabilized by the medium's chirality and the tendency to form twisted configurations, are shaped into arbitrary two-dimensional patterns, including reconfigurable phase gratings capable of generating and controlling optical phase singularities in laser beams. Our findings bridge the studies of defects in condensed matter physics and optics and may enable applications in data storage, singular optics, displays, electro-optic devices, diffraction gratings, as well as in both optically- and electrically-addressed pixel-free spatial light modulators
Optimal quantum cloning of orbital angular momentum photon qubits via Hong-Ou-Mandel coalescence
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light, associated with a helical
structure of the wavefunction, has a great potential for quantum photonics, as
it allows attaching a higher dimensional quantum space to each photon.
Hitherto, however, the use of OAM has been hindered by its difficult
manipulation. Here, exploiting the recently demonstrated spin-OAM information
transfer tools, we report the first observation of the Hong-Ou-Mandel
coalescence of two incoming photons having nonzero OAM into the same outgoing
mode of a beam-splitter. The coalescence can be switched on and off by varying
the input OAM state of the photons. Such effect has been then exploited to
carry out the 1 \rightarrow 2 universal optimal quantum cloning of OAM-encoded
qubits, using the symmetrization technique already developed for polarization.
These results are finally shown to be scalable to quantum spaces of arbitrary
dimension, even combining different degrees of freedom of the photons.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure