New research done at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Huazhang University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China have demonstrated that multiple quantum patterns of twisted light can be transmitted across a conventional fiber link that, paradoxically, supports only one pattern.
The team achieved this quantum trick by engineering entanglement in two degrees of freedom of light, polarization, and pattern, passing the polarized photon down the fiber and accessing the many patterns with the other photon. That introduces the concept of communicating across legacy fiber networks with multi-dimensional entangled states, bringing together the benefits of existing quantum communication with polarized photons with that of high-dimension communication using patterns of light.
The implication is a new approach to realizing a future quantum network, harnessing multiple dimensions of entangled quantum light.
The paper has been published in Science Advances. (SciTech Daily)