Entangled vector vortex beams

Light beams having a vectorial field structure, or polarization, that varies over the transverse profile and a central optical singularity are called vector vortex (VV) beams and may exhibit specific properties such as focusing into “light needles” or rotation invariance. VV beams have already found applications in areas ranging from microscopy to metrology, optical trapping, nano-optics, and quantum communication. Individual photons in such beams exhibit a form of single-particle quantum entanglement between different degrees of freedom. On the other hand, the quantum states of two photons can be also entangled with each other. Here, we combine these two concepts and demonstrate the generation of quantum entanglement between two photons that are both in VV states: a form of entanglement between two complex vectorial fields. This result may lead to quantum-enhanced applications of VV beams as well as to quantum information protocols fully exploiting the vectorial features of light.