Single-photon two-qubit "entangled'' states: preparation and measurement

Abstract

We implement experimentally a deterministic method to prepare and measure so called single-photon two-qubit entangled states or single-photon Bell-states, in which the polarization and the spatial modes of a single-photon each represent a quantum bit. All four single-photon Bell-states can be easily prepared and measured deterministically using linear optical elements alone. We also discuss how this method can be used for recently proposed single-photon two-qubit quantum cryptography protocol.