Triangular slit interference pattern of single photons with orbital angular momentum: Another beautiful experiment?

Author

Soares, W.C. ; Vidal, Ivan ; Caetano, D.P. ; Fonseca, E.J.S. ; Hickmann, J.M. ; Chavez-Cerda, S.

Author_Institution

Inst. de Fis., Univ. Fed. de Alagoas, Maceio, Brazil

fYear

2009

fDate

14-19 June 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

1

Abstract

This work presents a single-pass diffraction experiment that demonstrates that single photons in a vortex beam in passing through three slits arranged in an equilateral triangle can interfere with themselves and provide quantitative information of their total amount of orbital angular momentum (OAM) they carry. For the experiment presented the aperture has been reduced to a very thin triangular slit. A vortex beam is created by a diffractive optical element (DOE) and then it is made to pass through the slit. This work is considered as an extension to the Young double slit experiment.

Keywords

diffractive optical elements; laser beams; light diffraction; light interference; optical vortices; quantum optics; OAM; Young double slit experiment; orbital angular momentum; single photons; single-pass diffraction experiment; triangular slit; vortex beam; Apertures; Electron optics; Extraterrestrial measurements; Interference; Lattices; Optical diffraction; Optical interferometry; Optical vortices; Physics; US Department of Energy;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics 2009 and the European Quantum Electronics Conference. CLEO Europe - EQEC 2009. European Conference on

Conference_Location

Munich

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4079-5

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4080-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOE-EQEC.2009.5192886

Filename

5192886