Tomography of structured light beams: exploring analogies with quantum measurement theory

There is a fruitful interplay in the literature between quantum information theory and the study of vector beams, inspired by the mathematical structure shared by quantum entanglement and classical beams of light. As an example, measures of entanglement, notably concurrence, are widely used as measures of the quality of a vector beam. In addition, there is a close analogy, previously exploited in the literature, between polarimetry and qubit state tomography, which become identical tasks in the single photon limit. In this talk I will discuss the use of so-called POVM measurements in spatially-resolved polarimetry to characterise structured light beams.