Entanglement of orbital angular momentum states between an ensemble of cold atoms and a photon

Recently, atomic ensemble and single photons were successfully entangled by using collective enhancement [D. N. Matsukevich et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 040405 (2005)], where atomic internal states and photonic polarization states were correlated in a nonlocal manner. Here, we experimentally clarified that in an ensemble of atoms and a photon system, there also exists an entanglement concerned with spatial degrees of freedom. Generation of higher-dimensional entanglement between remote atomic ensemble and an application to condensed matter physics are also discussed.