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In this presentation, we show the efficacy of neural networks in reducing classical resources required for quantum state estimation. The developed methods achieve near-unity fidelities in reconstructed density matrices, and outperform Stokes reconstruction in a wide variety of scenarios.

We present the experimental conversion of a spatially-Gaussian optical mode into a self-healing, approximate Bessel-Gauss mode by a non-collinear, spatially-multimode four-wave mixing process in warm atomic vapor. In addition to the mode conversion, a second, spatially-separate conjugate beam is created in a non-Gaussian mode that mimics that of the resulting converted probe beam. Additionally, we show that these resulting beams exhibit the ability to partially self-heal their mode profiles after encountering an obstacle in their paths. This multi-spatial-mode nonlinear gain platform may thus be used as a new method for all-optically generating pairs of self-healing beams.

The generation of light containing large degrees of orbital angular momentum (OAM) has recently been demon- strated in both the classical and quantum regimes. Since there is no fundamental limit to how many quanta of OAM a single photon can carry, optical states with an arbitrarily high difference in this quantum number may, in principle, be entangled. This opens the door to investigations into high-dimensional entanglement shared between states in superpositions of nonzero OAM. Additionally, making use of non-zero OAM states can allow for a dramatic increase in the amount of information carried by a single photon, thus increasing the information capacity of a communication channel. In practice, however, it is difficult to differentiate between states with high OAM numbers with high precision. Here we investigate the ability of deep neural networks to differentiate between states that contain large values of OAM. We show that such networks may be used to differentiate be- tween nearby OAM states that contain realistic amounts of noise, with OAM values of up to 100. Additionally, we examine how the classification accuracy scales with the signal-to-noise ratio of images that are used to train the network, as well as those being tested. Finally, we demonstrate the simultaneous classification of < 100 OAM states with greater than 70 % accuracy. We intend to verify our system with experimentally-produced classi- cal OAM states, as well as investigate possibilities that would allow this technique to work in the few-photon quantum regime.

Although it is widely accepted that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, the behavior of quantum correlations and entanglement propagating through actively–pumped dispersive media has not been thoroughly studied. Here we investigate the behavior of quantum correlations and information in the presence of a nonlinear dispersive gaseous medium. We show that the quantum correlations can be advanced by a small fraction of the correlation time while the entanglement is preserved even in the presence of noise added by phase–insensitive gain. Additionally, although we observe an advance of the peak of the quantum mutual information between the modes, we find that the degradation of the mutual information due to the added noise appears to prevent an advancement of the mutual information’s leading tail. In contrast, we show that both the leading and trailing tails of the mutual information in a slow–light system can be significantly delayed in the presence of four-wave mixing (4WM) and electromagnetically induced transparency.

Due to its vital role in many quantum information and communication protocols, much theoretical and experi- mental work has been conducted in order to investigate the fundamental properties of entanglement. In this work we describe an experimental investigation into the behavior of continuous-variable entanglement and quantum mutual information upon propagation through slow- and fast-light media. A four-wave mixing process in warm atomic vapor is used to generate an entangled two-mode squeezed vacuum state of light. One of the two modes of the resulting state is then sent through a second four-wave mixing process that is tuned to exhibit either slow- or fast-light properties. The cross-correlation and quantum mutual information shared between the resulting modes is quanti ed, and di erences in their behavior after propagation through slow- and fast-light media are discussed.

We recently demonstrated optical pulses with large negative group velocities using a scheme based on four-wave-mixing in rubidium vapor. Both the probe and the generated conjugate pulses can experience anomalous dispersion, and we have demonstrated a maximum group advancement of 64% relative to the input pulse width. The four-wave-mixing scheme allows us to send whole images through a fast light medium, and we have analyzed the arrival of spatially-encoded information in the system. We are currently investigating the transport of quantum correlations that are shared by the probe and conjugate modes when sent through fast light media.