Generation and decomposition of scalar and vector modes carrying orbital angular momentum: a review

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum (OAM), one of the most recently discovered degrees of freedom of light beam field has fundamentally revolutionized optical physics and its technological capabilities. Optical beams with OAM have enabled a large variety of applications, including super-resolution imaging, optical trapping, classical and quantum optical communication, and quantum computing, to mention a few. To enable these and several other emerging applications, optical beams with OAM have been generated using a variety of methods and technologies, such as a simple astigmatic lens pair, one-/two-dimensional holographic optical elements, threedimensional spiral phase plates, optical fibers, and recent entrants such as metasurfaces. All these techniques achieve spatial light modulation and can be implemented with either passive elements or active devices, such as liquid crystal on silicon and digital micromirror devices. Many of these devices and technologies are not only used for the generation of amplitude phase-polarization structured light beams but are also capable of analyzing them. We have attempted to encompass a wide variety of such technologies as well as a few emerging methodologies, broadly categorized into generation and detection protocols. We address the needs of scientists and engineers who desire to generate/detect OAM modes and are looking for the technique (active or passive) best suited for their application. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

Phase Singularities to Polarization Singularities

“…e research area of polarization vortices (vector vortex beams or Poincaré beams) is relatively a new field compared to its scalar counterpart, i.e., optical phase vortices. Polarization vortices are still an emerging and active area of research with few review articles [18,29,[594][595][596] published. ere is also a review article [597], highlighting the applications of vector beams.…”

Spatial-Light-Modulator-Based Multichannel Data Transmission by Vortex Beams of Various Orders

“…MDM is based on maintaining the orthogonality of optical modes when passing through optical media and systems [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ], which provides a simple way to demultiplex information that corresponds to different mode channels based on matched filters [ 16 , 28 , 40 , 41 ]. MDM-based information encoding in a physical medium is easily accomplished using diffractive optics.…”

All femtosecond optical pump and X-ray probe: holey-axicon for free electron laser

“…However, experimental studies are needed to understand the impact of the force fields in the proposed optical configurations. The recent developments on the generation of exotic optical fields such as fields varying in amplitude, phase and polarization [96,97], vector fields [97], fields generated by OAM superposition [92,98,99], OAM beams in unconventional beam channels [100] will enable sophisticated light-matter interactions studies.…”