Compressed sensing of twisted photons

Abstract

The ability to completely characterize the state of a quantum system is an essential element for the emerging quantum technologies. Here, we present a compressed-sensing inspired method to ascertain any rank-deficient qudit state, which we experimentally encode in photonic orbital angular momentum. We efficiently reconstruct these qudit states from a few scans with an intensified CCD camera. Since it requires only a few intensity measurements, our technique would provide an easy and accurate way to identify quantum sources, channels, and systems.