Phys.org July 22, 2021
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory propose that modulated quantum metasurfaces can control all properties of photonic qubits, a breakthrough that could impact the fields of quantum information, communications, sensing and imaging, as well as energy and momentum harvesting. They developed a metasurface that looked like an array of rotated crosses, then proposed to shoot a single photon through the metasurface, where the photon splits into a superposition of many colors, paths, and spinning states generating quantum entanglement meaning the single photon can inherit different properties at once. According to the researchers by manipulating these properties, the technology could be used to encode information in photons traveling within a quantum network for cryptography. By modulating the quantum metasurface they expect to efficiently extract and convert virtual photons into real photon pairs… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
A metasurface with all-optical modulation of the refractive index induces color-spin-path quantum entanglement on a transmitted single photon. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory