Coherence and Dimensionality Witnesses for Fractional OAM Modes

Abstract: We characterize sets of fractional orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of a light beam using unitary-invariant properties encoded by two-mode overlaps. Using basis-independent coherence and dimension witnesses, we experimentally certify, on a triple of fractional modes, both the presence of coherence and that the states necessarily span a space of dimension 3. We propose and implement a practical, fast experimental method to extract two-mode overlaps requiring only a single intensity image per interference pair. These results lay the groundwork for using fractional OAM states in high-dimensional quantum information protocols.