Heralded generation of vectorially structured photons with high purity Provisionally accepted The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon. Notify me

Hai-Jun Wu¹, Bing-Shi Yu¹, Zhi-Han Zhu^1*, Carmelo Rosales-Guzmán^{1, 2}, Zhi-Yuan Zhou^{1, 3}, Dong-Sheng Ding^{1, 3}, Wei Gao¹ and Bao-Sen Shi^{1, 3*}

• ¹Harbin University of Science and Technology, China
• ²Centro de Investigaciones en Optica, Mexico
• ³CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, China

Engineering vector spatial modes of photons is an important approach for manipulating high-dimension photonic states in various quantum optical experiments. In this work, we demonstrate generation of heralded single photons with well-defined vector spatial modes by using a self-locking polarizing interferometer comprising a spatial light modulator. Specifically, it is shown that, by carefully tailoring and compensating spatial and temporal amplitudes of manipulated photons, one can exactly convert ultrafast single photons into desired spin-orbit states with extremely high purity. This compact and robust device provides a versatile way for not only generation, but also manipulation and characterization of arbitrary photonic spin-orbit states.