Photonic quantum information applications of patterned liquid crystals

In this paper we review recent results we obtained in the field of photonic quantum information that were made possible by the introduction of patterned non-uniform liquid crystal cells known as ‘‘q-plates’’: (i) the generation of entangled states of polarization and orbital angular momentum of a photon; (ii) the transfer of a qubit of quantum information from the spin to the orbital angular momentum of photons and vice versa; (iii) the Hong-Ou-Mandel coalescence in the same outgoing mode of a beam-splitter of two photons having nonzero orbital angular momentum; (iv) the universal optimal quantum cloning of orbital-angular-momentum-encoded qubits.