Frankfurt 2006 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help

SYRT: Radiation transport in random media

SYRT 2: Radiation transport in random media II

SYRT 2.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 17, 2006, 14:00–14:30, HVI

Twin-photon light scattering — •J.P. Woerdman — Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

We will report our recent experimental work on the scattering of entangled twin-photons by a variety of media, such as suspensions, multi-mode fibers, sub-wavelength hole arrays, etc. The common aspect of all this is the central role played by the spatial degrees of freedom. This can work out in a ’positive’ sense, by allowing the possibility of high-dimensional spatial entanglement of the two photons. It can also work out in a ’negative’ sense, when the (unobserved) spatial degrees of freedom are coupled to the polarization degree of freedom, thus degrading the polarization entanglement (’decoherence’). In both cases the presence of a high-dimensional Hilbert space of spatial states leads to very rich physics.