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We propose an experimental scheme for the measurement of entanglement between two two-level atoms. Our scheme requires one of the two entangled atoms to interact with a cavity field dispersively, and we show that by measuring the zero time-delay second-order coherence function of the cavity field, one can measure the concurrence of an arbitrary Bell-like atomic two-qubit state. As our scheme requires only one of the atoms to interact with the measured cavity, the entanglement quantification becomes independent of the location of the other atom. Therefore, our scheme can have important implications for entanglement quantification in distributed quantum systems., Accepted in Annalen der Physik

We demonstrate that the conservation of extremal ellipticity for an astigmatic Gaussian beam propagating in a rotationally invariant medium, for example, an arbitrary sequence of free space propagation and stigmatic lenses, initially identified by Lo et al. (2017), is a direct consequence of the conservation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the beam. We derive explicit analytical expressions for the first few non-zero moments of the beam OAM and show that, apart from fundamental constants, they depend only on the beam’s extremal ellipticity. This unexpected connection uncovers the actual origin of a new propagation invariant, namely extremal ellipticity, for a broad class of coherent, single-mode Gaussian beams. We expect this principle to find use in various applications where spot circularity along an extended region of the beam is essential; such as laser micromachining, imaging, optical trapping, and inertial confinement fusion.