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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 88 » Issue 25
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 257901 (2002) [4 pages]

Measuring the Orbital Angular Momentum of a Single Photon

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Jonathan Leach1, Miles J. Padgett1, Stephen M. Barnett2, Sonja Franke-Arnold2, and Johannes Courtial1,*
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
2Department of Physics and Applied Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

Received 21 January 2002; published 5 June 2002

See accompanying Physics Focus

We propose an interferometric method for measuring the orbital angular momentum of single photons. We demonstrate its viability by sorting four different orbital angular momentum states, and are thus able to encode two bits of information on a single photon. This new approach has implications for entanglement experiments, quantum cryptography and high density information transfer.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.257901
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.257901
PACS:
03.67.-a, 42.50.Ct

*Electronic address: j.courtial@physics.gla.ac.uk

 
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