Abstract
The transverse spatial attributes of an optical beam can be decomposed into the position, momentum, and orbital angular momentum observables. The position and momentum of a beam are directly related to the quadrature amplitudes, while the orbital angular momentum is related to the polarization (spin) variables. In this paper, we study the quantum properties of these spatial variables, using a representation in the Stokes-operator basis. We propose a spatial detection scheme to measure all three spatial variables and, consequently, propose a scheme for the generation of spatial Stokes-operator squeezing and entanglement.
- Received 8 November 2008
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.79.043825
©2009 American Physical Society