Optical rotation, a form of optical activity, is a phenomenon employed in various metrological applications and industries including chemical, food, and pharmaceutical. In naturally-occurring, as well as structured media, the integrated effect is, however, typically small. Here, we demonstrate that, by exploiting the inherent and stable spin-orbit interaction of orbital angular momentum fiber modes, giant, scalable optical activity can be obtained, and that we can use this effect to realize a new type of wavemeter by exploiting its optical rotary dispersion. The device we construct provides for an instantaneous wavelength-measurement technique with high resolving power R = 3.4 × 106 (i.e., resolution < 0.3 pm at 1-μm wavelengths) and can also detect spectral bandwidths of known lineshapes with high sensitivity.

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We present a high resolution optical rotary dispersion spectrometer that can detect spectral bandwidth with high sensitivity (< 1 pm) by exploiting the induced optical activity of OAM fiber modes.

We show that orbital angular momentum, and especially its coupling with spin angular momentum (polarization), yields distinctive selection rules for the modal content of Stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers.