Experimental Demonstration of Three Mutually Orthogonal Polarization States of Entangled Photons

Tedros Tsegaye; Jonas Söderholm; Mete Atatüre; Alexei Trifonov; Gunnar Björk; Alexander V. Sergienko; Bahaa E. A. Saleh; Malvin C. Teich

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.5013

Experimental Demonstration of Three Mutually Orthogonal Polarization States of Entangled Photons

Tedros Tsegaye, Jonas Söderholm, Mete Atatüre, Alexei Trifonov, Gunnar Björk, Alexander V. Sergienko, Bahaa E. A. Saleh, and Malvin C. Teich

Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5013 – Published 11 December 2000

Abstract

Linearly polarized classical light can be expressed in a vertical and a horizontal component. Geometrically rotating vertically polarized light by 90° will convert it to the orthogonal horizontal polarization. We have experimentally generated a two-photon state of light which evolves into an orthogonal state upon geometrical rotation by 60°. Rotating this state by an additional 60° will yield a state which is mutually orthogonal to the first two states. Generalizing this procedure, one can generate $N + 1$ mutually orthogonal $N$ -photon states that cyclicly evolve from one to another upon a geometric rotation by $180 / (N + 1)$ degrees.

Received 4 August 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.5013

Authors & Affiliations

Tedros Tsegaye¹, Jonas Söderholm¹, Mete Atatüre⁴, Alexei Trifonov^1,2, Gunnar Björk^1,*, Alexander V. Sergienko³, Bahaa E. A. Saleh³, and Malvin C. Teich^3,4

¹Department of Electronics, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 229, SE-164 40 Kista, Sweden
²Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, 26 Polytekhnicheskaya, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
³Quantum Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University, 8 Saint Mary's Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
⁴Quantum Imaging Laboratory, Department of Physics, Boston University, 8 Saint Mary's Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02215