Measuring qutrit-qutrit entanglement of orbital angular momentum states of an atomic ensemble and a photon

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Sep 11;103(11):110503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.110503. Epub 2009 Sep 11.

Abstract

Three-dimensional entanglement of orbital angular momentum states of an atomic qutrit and a single photon qutrit has been observed. Their full state was reconstructed using quantum state tomography. The fidelity to the maximally entangled state of Schmidt rank 3 exceeds the threshold 2/3. This result confirms that the density matrix cannot be decomposed into an ensemble of pure states of Schmidt rank 1 or 2. That is, the Schmidt number of the density matrix must be equal to or greater than 3.