Weak Measurements with Orbital-Angular-Momentum Pointer States

GRACIANA PUENTES, N. HERMOSA, AND J. P. TORRES

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2012 vol. 109 p. 1 - 5

0031-9007

Weak measurements are a unique tool for accessing information about weakly interacting quantum systems with minimal back action. Joint weak measurements of single-particle operators with pointer states characterized by a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution can provide, in turn, key information about quantum correlations that can be relevant for quantum information applications. Here we demonstrate that by employing two-dimensional pointer states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM), it is possible to extract weak values of the higher order moments of single-particle operators, an inaccessible quantity with Gaussian pointer states only. We provide a specific example that illustrates the advantages of our method both in terms of signal enhancement and information retrieval.