Quadratic Quantum Polarimetry with Entangled Photon Pairs

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 10 Apr 2026] Quadratic Quantum Polarimetry with Entangled Photon Pairs Jinliang Ren, Vira Besaga, Ivan Lopushenko, Jinyong Ma, Alexander Bykov, Igor Meglinski, Frank Setzpfandt, Andrey A. Sukhorukov Conventional polarimetry, including schemes leveraging entangled light, characterizes optical samples through linear transformations of polarization states. We introduce a two-photon probing approach in which both photons of an entangled pair interact with the same depolarizing medium simultaneously. In this regime, the transformation of the two-photon polarization correlations becomes quadratic in the Mueller matrix, enabling access to second-order polarization information beyond conventional polarimetry. We develop a theoretical framework linking the Mueller matrix to the evolution of the two-photon polarization correlation tensor and show that depolarization induces quadratic degradation of entanglement and state purity. Experiments using polarization-entangled photon pairs transmitted through controlled scattering media confirm the predicted response and reveal enhanced sensitivity to polarization scrambling compared with single-photon probing. These results establish two-photon probing as a higher-order quantum polarimetric modality for characterizing polarization channels. Comments: 4 figure, 5 pages Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph); Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2604.09257 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.09257v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.09257 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Jinliang Ren [view email] [v1] Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:17:06 UTC (36,389 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics physics.bio-ph physics.optics References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)