Recent Advances in Generation and Detection of Orbital Angular Momentum Optical Beams-A Review

Micro-Ring Resonator-Based Tunable Vortex Beam Emitter

Light beams bearing orbital angular momentum (OAM) are used in various scientific and engineering applications, such as microscopy, laser material processing, and optical tweezers. Precise topological charge control is crucial for efficiently using vortex beams in different fields, such as information encoding in optical communications and sensor systems. This work presents a novel method for optimizing an emitting micro-ring resonator (MRR) for emitting vortex beams with variable orders of OAM. The MRR consists of a ring waveguide with periodic structures side-coupled to a bus waveguide. The resonator is tunable due to the phase change material Sb2Se3 deposited on the ring. This material can change from amorphous to crystalline while changing its refractive index. In the amorphous phase, it is 3.285 + 0i, while in the transition to the crystalline phase, it reaches 4.050 + 0i at emission wavelength 1550 nm. We used this property to control the vortex beam topological charge. In our study, we optimized the distance between the bus waveguide and the ring waveguide, the bending angle, and the width of the bus waveguide. The optimality criterion was chosen to maximize the flux density of the radiated energy emitted by the resonator. The numerical simulation results proved our method. The proposed approach can be used to optimize optical beam emitters carrying OAM for various applications.

Direct prediction and compensation of atmospheric turbulence for free-space integer and fractional order OAM multiplexed transmission links

Atmospheric turbulence has an adverse impact on orbital angular momentum (OAM) beam transmission, resulting in power fluctuations and mode crosstalk. These challenges are particularly pronounced in OAM multiplexing links. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a novel network architecture that integrates convolutional layers and residual structures to address the issue of turbulence phase compensation. By harnessing the local feature learning capability of convolutional layers and the information-preserving function of residual structures, we aim to mitigate the adverse effects of network depth on information loss. By employing the proposed network, we compensate the turbulence phase directly using the received intensity distributions for free space multiplexed integer and fractional order OAM links, respectively. The obtained results show that the received optical power can be improved for more than 10 dB for integer order OAM multiplexed FSO links under weak to strong turbulence conditions, while 9 dB for fractional-order OAM multiplexed FSO links. Moreover, mode crosstalk can be reduced for about 10 dB under 4 OAM modes multiplexed links under turbulence strength D/r0=5. The proposed deep learning based atmospheric turbulence compensation method can predict phase screens rapidly and accurately, thus enhancing the dependability of future OAM multiplexing technology.

Dual-functional metalenses for the polarization-controlled generation of focalized vector beams in the telecom infrared

The availability of static tiny optical devices is mandatory to reduce the complexity of optical paths that typically use dynamic optical components and/or many standard elements for the generation of complex states of light, leading to unprecedented levels of miniaturization and compactness of optical systems. In particular, the design of flat and integrated optical elements capable of multiple vector beams generation with high resolution in the visible and infrared range is very attractive in many fields, from life science to information and communication technology. In this regard, we propose dual-functional transmission dielectric metalenses that act simultaneously on the dynamic and geometric phases in order to manipulate independently right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized states of light and generate focused vector beams in a compact and versatile way. In the specific, starting from the mathematical fundamentals for the compact generation of vector beams using dual-functional optical elements, we provide the numerical algorithms for the computation of metaoptics and apply those techniques to the design and fabrication of silicon metalenses which are able to generate and focus different vector beams in the telecom infrared, depending on the linear polarization state in input. This approach provides new integrated optics for applications in the fields of high-resolution microscopy, optical manipulation, and optical communications, both in the classical and single-photon regimes.

Simplifying the Experimental Detection of the Vortex Topological Charge Based on the Simultaneous Astigmatic Transformation of Several Types and Levels in the Same Focal Plane

It is known that the astigmatic transformation can be used to analyze the topological charge of a vortex beam, which can be implemented by using various optical methods. In this case, in order to form an astigmatic beam pattern suitable for the clear detection of a topological charge, an optical adjustment is often required (changing the lens tilt and/or the detection distance). In this article, we propose to use multi-channel diffractive optical elements (DOEs) for the simultaneous implementation of the astigmatic transformations of various types and levels. Such multi-channel DOEs make it possible to insert several types of astigmatic aberrations of different levels into the analyzed vortex beam simultaneously, and to form a set of aberration-transformed beam patterns in different diffraction orders in one detection plane. The proposed approach greatly simplifies the analysis of the characteristics of a vortex beam based on measurements in the single plane without additional adjustments. In this article, a detailed study of the effect of various types of astigmatic aberrations based on a numerical simulation and experiments was carried out, which confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

On-chip ultracompact multimode vortex beam emitter based on vertical modes

Free-space orbital angular momentum (OAM) communication is considered as one of the potential alternative on-chip optical interconnect solutions. The number of OAM modes determines the capacity of high-speed communication. However, existing integrated vortex beam emitters have a constraint relationship between the number of OAM modes and the emitter size, rendering it difficult to emit more OAM modes with a small-sized emitter. In view of the above, this study proposes an on-chip ultracompact multimode vortex beam emitter based on vertical modes, which permits more OAM modes without requiring an increase in the size of the emitter. Vertical modes in large-aspect-ratio waveguides are pointed out to enable multimode microrings with small radii because high-order vertical modes can maintain almost the same horizontal wave vector as that of the fundamental mode. Four-mode and five-mode vortex beam emitters with the same radius of 1.5 µm are designed and the effectiveness of these emitters is verified through simulation. Furthermore, a high-efficiency and low-crosstalk approach for high-order vertical mode coupling by varying the waveguide height is presented. This research not only promotes further integration of on-chip optical interconnection, but also provides a new strategy for optical waveguide mode selection in photonic integrated circuits design.

Terahertz quasi non-diffraction Bessel vortex beam generation using three lattice types reflective metasurface

Bandwidth, orbital-angular momentum (OAM) divergence, and mode purity are the three critical issues for the practical terahertz orbital angular momentum manipulation, especially in the next sixth-generation (6G) communication system. Here we propose the broadband high-order Bessel vortex beam carrying multiple OAM modes reflective metasurface in the terahertz domain. The simulation results agree with the theoretical expectation, and the diffracting divergence of OAM vortex beam characteristics has been alleviated. The research on the relationship between the varieties of lattice type and mode purity is also relatively scarce. Henceforth, a comparison study has been conducted between three lattice types, i.e., square lattice, triangular lattice, and concentric ring lattice. And corresponding results of the relationship of mode purity with those lattice types show that the concentric ring lattice has the best performance.

Multi-channel higher-order OAM generation and switching based on a mode selective interferometer

A multi-channel orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode generation and switching scheme is proposed and demonstrated based on an in-fiber mode selective interferometer (MSI), which is formed in a four-mode fiber. The MSI consists of two strong modulated long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs), which realizes the mode selected coupling between a target mode pair. With the optimized structural parameters, the MSI can couple a launched LP₀₁ (or OAM₀) into a desired higher-order azimuthal mode (HAM, LPl₁ or OAM_±l, l≥1) at multiple wavelength channels and generate the HAM with high-purity. To verify this concept, we fabricate two LPFGs in a four-mode fiber with designed distance and hence realize a MSI which can generate the second-order HAM (OAM₂ or LP₂₁) at 17 wavelength channels. The mode conversion efficiency is more than 90% at 17 wavelengths and the corresponding mode purity is no less than 97%, respectively. In addition, we also demonstrate that the selected mode pair (OAM₀ and OAM₂) can be switched at multiple channels by changing the state of the MSI. This MSI can also be used as a wavelength band-rejection filter on different spatial modes and find potential applications in optical communications and sensing.

Influence of optical "dipoles" on the topological charge of a field with a fractional initial charge

In this work, using the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integral and Berry formula, a topological charge (TC) of a Gaussian optical vortex with an initial fractional TC in the far field was calculated. It was found that, for diverse fractional parts of the TC, the beam contained different numbers of screw dislocations, which determined the TC of the entire beam. If a fractional part of the TC was small, the beam consisted of the main optical vortex centered on the optical axis, with the TC equal to the nearest integer (say n>0) and two edge dislocations located on the vertical axis (one above and the other below the center). When the fractional part of the initial TC increased, a "dipole" was formed from the upper edge dislocation, consisting of two vortices with TCs equal to +1 and -1. With a further increase in the fractional part, the additional vortex with TC=+1 moved to the center of the beam, and the vortex with TC=-1 moved to the periphery. When the fractional part of the TC increased further, another "dipole" was formed from the lower edge dislocation, in which, on the contrary, the vortex with TC=-1 was displaced to the optical axis (to the center of the beam) and the vortex with TC=+1 moved to the beam periphery. When the fractional part of the TC became equal to 1/2, the lower vortex with a TC=-1, which was earlier displaced to the center of the beam, began to shift to the periphery, and the upper vortex with a TC=+1 moved closer and closer to the center of the beam, eventually merging with the main vortex when the fractional part approached 1. Such dynamics of additional vortices with TCs above +1 and below -1 determined which whole TC the beam would have (n or n+1) for different values of the fractional part from the segment [n,n+1]. Our analysis has shown that, for any value of the fractional part of the initial topological charge, the TC of the beam in the far field will not be determined. Since, with an increase in the radius of the circle in the beam section on which the TC is calculated, more optical "dipoles" will appear, and the TC will be either n or n+1.

Single-shot generation of composite optical vortex beams using hybrid binary fork gratings

We design and experimentally demonstrate a simple, single-shot method for the generation of arbitrary composite vortex (CV) beams using hybrid binary fork gratings (hBFG). These gratings were computationally generated by removing the central region around the fork-dislocation of azimuthal charge ℓ₁ and substituting it with a BFG of a different charge ℓ₂. The geometrical parameters of hBFGs were optimized for the efficient generation of CV beams. The method was further extended to the generation of CV beams consisting of three different ℓ and of higher radial charges p. This simple generation method may be useful to generate complex beam shapes with engineered phase fronts without complicated interferometry based techniques.

Modern Types of Axicons: New Functions and Applications

Axicon is a versatile optical element for forming a zero-order Bessel beam, including high-power laser radiation schemes. Nevertheless, it has drawbacks such as the produced beam's parameters being dependent on a particular element, the output beam's intensity distribution being dependent on the quality of element manufacturing, and uneven axial intensity distribution. To address these issues, extensive research has been undertaken to develop nondiffracting beams using a variety of advanced techniques. We looked at four different and special approaches for creating nondiffracting beams in this article. Diffractive axicons, meta-axicons-flat optics, spatial light modulators, and photonic integrated circuit-based axicons are among these approaches. Lately, there has been noteworthy curiosity in reducing the thickness and weight of axicons by exploiting diffraction. Meta-axicons, which are ultrathin flat optical elements made up of metasurfaces built up of arrays of subwavelength optical antennas, are one way to address such needs. In addition, when compared to their traditional refractive and diffractive equivalents, meta-axicons have a number of distinguishing advantages, including aberration correction, active tunability, and semi-transparency. This paper is not intended to be a critique of any method. We have outlined the most recent advancements in this field and let readers determine which approach best meets their needs based on the ease of fabrication and utilization. Moreover, one section is devoted to applications of axicons utilized as sensors of optical properties of devices and elements as well as singular beams states and wavefront features.