Popper’s conjecture with angular slits and twisted light

Abstract

Uncertainty relations are core to both classical and quantum physics, and lend themselves to tests across many degrees of freedom, with structured light emerging as a vibrant tool to harness these degrees of freedom. Here, we test Popper’s conjecture by replacing the traditional spatial and momentum states with angular position and orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of photons, showing that the OAM spectrum for an entangled photon passing through a virtual slit differs from that of a photon passing through a physical slit. To achieve this, we produce two OAM entangled photons, one of which is sent to a slit encoded as a digital hologram, thereby localising its angular position, all the while measuring the OAM of the other. We show that the measured OAM spectrum is limited to that of the initial SPDC photons, independent of the OAM encoded into the slit, consistent with Popper’s viewpoint. Our approach allows us to overcome prior limitations imposed by physical slits and linear momentum, and offers a versatile toolbox for further probes of quantum systems.