Transferring the spatial state of an entangled photon pair to a single photon by photon detection

摘要

We show theoretically that the spatial state of entangled photons generated by parametric down-conversion can be transferred to the spatial state of an idler photon by signal photon detection. This study considered the general condition with an arbitrary pump field profile and the detection of a signal photon at an arbitrary distance from a nonlinear crystal where the entangled photons are generated. Upon the detection of a signal photon, the two-photon state function of the entangled state can be transferred to a single-photon state function of the idler field due to the EPR type correlation between the signal and idler fields. The spatial state of the idler field contains more information on the original two-photon state.