Experimental optimal cloning of four-dimensional quantum states of photons.

Optimal quantum cloning is the process of making one or more copies of an arbitrary unknown input quantum state with the highest possible fidelity. All reported demonstrations of quantum cloning have so far been limited to copying two-dimensional quantum states, or qubits. We report the experimental realization of the optimal quantum cloning of four-dimensional quantum states, or ququarts, encoded in the polarization and orbital angular momentum degrees of freedom of photons. Our procedure, based on the symmetrization method, is also shown to be generally applicable to quantum states of arbitrarily high dimension-or qudits-and to be scalable to an arbitrary number of copies, in all cases remaining optimal. Furthermore, we report the bosonic coalescence of two single-particle entangled states.

The polarizing Sagnac interferometer: a tool for light orbital angular momentum sorting and spin-orbit photon processing.

In this paper we show that an optical setup based on a polarizing Sagnac interferometer combined with a Dove prism can be used as a convenient general-purpose tool for the generation, detection and sorting of spin-orbit states of light. This device can work both in the classical and in the quantum single-photon regime, provides higher sorting efficiency and extinction ratio than usual hologram-fiber combinations, and shows much higher stability and ease of alignment than Mach-Zehnder interferometer setups. To demonstrate the full potential of this setup, we also report some demonstrative experiments of several possible applications of this setup.

Optically induced space-charge fields, dc voltage, and extraordinarily large nonlinearity in dye-doped nematic liquid crystals.

We have observed extraordinarily large optical nonlinearity in Methyl Red-doped nematic liquid-crystal film. Grating diffraction can be generated with an optical intensity as low as 40 microW/cm(2) , and a refractive-index change coefficient of more than 6 cm(2)/ W is obtained. The effect is attributed to formation of an optically induced dc space-charge field and to the resulting reorientation of the highly birefringent nematic director axis.

Dye-doped liquid crystals as high-resolution recording media: errata.

In Ref. 1, the second sentence of the abstract should read as follows: "As compared with other methods that make use of these materials, we have achieved higher sensitivity with good spatial resolution."

Dye-doped liquid crystals as high-resolution recording media.

Light-induced anchoring of the molecular director is reported to be an efficient method for writing permanent holographic gratings in dye-doped liquid crystals. We have achieved higher sensitivity and spatial resolution in these materials with other methods. An energy density as low as 10(-1) J/cm(2) was sufficient to write gratings with a resolution higher than 100 lines/mm.