Coherence and Dimensionality Witnesses for Fractional OAM Modes

2025/09/16 by I. Prego, Junior, A. L. S. Santos, Prego, I. +12
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors #FOS: Physical sciences #Lipid Membrane Structure and Behavior #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Spectroscopy Techniques in Biomedical and Chemical Research

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.13275

openalex publication_date 2025/09/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We characterize sets of fractional orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of a light beam using unitary-invariant properties encoded by two-mode overlaps. Using basis-independent coherence and dimension witnesses, we experimentally certify, on a triple of fractional modes, both the presence of coherence and that the states necessarily span a space of dimension 3. We propose and implement a practical, fast experimental method to extract two-mode overlaps requiring only a single intensity image per interference pair. These results lay the groundwork for using fractional OAM states in high-dimensional quantum information protocols.

Citations

• Kirkwood-Dirac representations beyond quantum states (and their relation to noncontextuality)
• Measuring relational information between quantum states, and applications
• Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems

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