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Structured light, i.e. light fields with a non-trivial shape in time, space, and polarization, has become a versatile
approach to explore fundamental optics effects and develop novel applications in fields such as microscopy,
imaging, optical communications, and quantum technologies, to name a few. In this talk, I will first introduce
the field of structured light along with some of its applications in classical and quantum optics.
Following this introduction, I will focus on two of our recent quantum optics experiments exploring nonlinear optical
processes and structured light. In the first experiment, we test the fundamental law of angular momentum conservation
commonly assumed for photons in nonlinear frequency conversion processes. We show that the angular momentum
conservation still holds on the single photon level and outline a scheme to leverage it for the generation of high-dimensional
multi-photon quantum states. In second experiment, I will present so-called quantum frequency conversion process
which we control using structured light. In our approach a single photon is not only converted from one frequency to
another, but its entanglement with a partner photon is simultaneously changed from being in polarization to the spatial profile of the photon. We show that the preservation of entanglement (non-local) during this process is conditioned upon the
classical non-separability (local) of the structured field that drives the process. Not only show our results an interesting link
between classical and quantum non-separability but they will also enable novel studies in open quantum systems and
quantum nonlinear optical applications. |