Selective tuning of Hilbert spaces in states encoded with spatial modes of light

Abstract

Spatial modes of light directly give the most easily accessible degree of freedom that span an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. The higher dimensional spatial mode entanglement realized using spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) process is generally restricted to the subspace defined by a single spatial mode in pump. Access to other modal subspaces can be realized by pumping beams carrying several easily tunable transverse modes. As a proof-to-principle experiment, we generate twin-photon states in a nonlinear SPDC process with pump as a superposition of first order Laguerre-Gaussian (or Hermite-Gaussian) modes. We show that the generated states can be easily tuned between different subspaces by controlling the respective modal content in the pump superposition.