Integrated Preparation of Photonic Spin-Orbit Qudits

Abstract

Preparing and manipulating N-dimensional flying qudits as well as subsequently establishing their entanglement are still challenging tasks. Here, using an integrated approach, we explore the synergy from two degrees of freedom of light, spatial mode and polarization, to generate, encode, and manipulate flying photon qudits in a four-dimensional Hilbert space with high quantum fidelity, intrinsically enabling enhanced noise resilience and higher quantum data rates.