Direct Tomography of High-Dimensional Density Matrices for General Quantum States of Photons.

Quantum-state tomography is the conventional method used to characterize density matrices for general quantum states. However, the data acquisition time generally scales linearly with the dimension of the Hilbert space, hindering the possibility of dynamic monitoring of a high-dimensional quantum system. Here, we demonstrate a direct tomography protocol to measure density matrices of photons in the position basis through the use of a polarization-resolving camera, where the dimension of density matrices can be as large as 580×580 in our experiment. The use of the polarization-resolving camera enables parallel measurements in the position and polarization basis and as a result, the data acquisition time of our protocol does not increase with the dimension of the Hilbert space and is solely determined by the camera exposure time (on the order of 10 ms). Our method is potentially useful for the real-time monitoring of the dynamics of quantum states and paves the way for the development of high-dimensional, time-efficient quantum metrology techniques.

Compensation-free high-dimensional free-space optical communication using turbulence-resilient vector beams.

Free-space optical communication is a promising means to establish versatile, secure and high-bandwidth communication between mobile nodes for many critical applications. While the spatial modes of light offer a degree of freedom to increase the information capacity of an optical link, atmospheric turbulence can introduce severe distortion to the spatial modes and lead to data degradation. Here, we demonstrate experimentally a vector-beam-based, turbulence-resilient communication protocol, namely spatial polarization differential phase shift keying (SPDPSK), that can reliably transmit high-dimensional information through a turbulent channel without the need of any adaptive optics for beam compensation. In a proof-of-principle experiment with a controllable turbulence cell, we measure a channel capacity of 4.84 bits per pulse using 34 vector modes through a turbulent channel with a scintillation index of 1.09, and 4.02 bits per pulse using 18 vector modes through even stronger turbulence corresponding to a scintillation index of 1.54.

Spectral shift of a light wave on scattering from an ellipsoidal particle with arbitrary orientation.

Within the accuracy of the first-order Born approximation, a general expression for the far-zone spectrum of a light wave on scattering from an arbitrarily orientated ellipsoidal particle is derived. We show that the spectrum of the scattered field, in general, changes with the scattering azimuthal angle, displaying rotational nonsymmetry. The influence of the orientation of the particle on the spectrum of the scattered field is discussed, and the relationship between the orientation of scattering particle and the distribution of the relative spectral shift of the scattered field is investigated.

Thin absorber extreme ultraviolet photomask based on Ni-TaN nanocomposite material.

We study the use of random nanocomposite material as a photomask absorber layer for the next generation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. By introducing nickel nanoparticles (NPs) randomly into a TaN host, the nanocomposite absorber layer can greatly reduce the reflectivity as compared with the standard TaN layer of the same thickness. Finite integral simulations show that the reduction in the reflectivity is mainly due to the enhanced absorption by the Ni NPs. The fluctuation in reflectivity induced by scattering and random position of the NPs is found to be on the order of 0.1%. Based on these observations, we build an effective medium model for the nanocomposite absorber layer and use the transfer matrix method to identify optimal absorber designs that utilize cavity effects to reduce the required volume fraction of Ni NPs. We further perform a process simulation and show that our approach can greatly reduce the HV bias in the lithography process.

Coherent perfect absorption in chiral metamaterials.

We study the coherent perfect absorption (CPA) of a chiral structure and derive analytically the CPA condition for transversely isotropic chiral structures in circular polarization bases. The coherent absorption of such a chiral system is generally polarization dependent and can be tuned by the relative phase between the coherent input beams. To demonstrate our theoretical predictions, a chiral metamaterial absorber operating in the terahertz frequency range is optimized. We numerically demonstrate that a coherent absorption of 99.5% can be achieved. Moreover, we show that an optimized CPA chiral structure can be used as an interferometric control of polarization state of the output beams with constant output intensity.