Recent advances on optical vortex generation

Nanophotonics

article

Xuewen Wang¹  Zhongquan Nie¹  Yao Liang¹  Jian Wang³  Tao Li⁴  Baohua Jia¹ 

[1] Centre for Micro-Photonics, Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology;Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System, Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronics, Taiyuan University of Technology;Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology;National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Physics, Nanjing University

关键词: optical vortex;    orbital angular momentum;    dynamic phase;    geometric phase;    metasurfaces;    spin-orbit interaction;    vortex lasers;    fractional vortex;    multiplexing;    multicasting;    vortex array generation;   

DOI  :  10.1515/nanoph-2018-0072

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: De Gruyter

【 摘 要 】

This article reviews recent progress leading to the generation of optical vortex beams. After introducing the basics of optical vortex beams and their promising applications, we summarized different approaches for optical vortex generation by discrete components and laser cavities. We place particular emphasis on the recent development of vortex generation by the planar phase plates, which are able to engineer a spiral phasefront via dynamic or geometric phase in nanoscale, and highlight the independent operation of these two different phases which leads to a multifunctional optical vortex beam generation and independent spin-orbit interaction. We also introduced the recent progress on vortex lasing, including vortex beam generation from the output of bulk lasers by modification of conventional laser cavities with phase elements and from integrated on-chip microlasers. Similar approaches are also applied to generate fractional vortex beams carrying fractional topological charge. The advanced technology and approaches on design and nanofabrications enable multiple vortex beams generation from a single device via multiplexing, multicasting, and vortex array, open up opportunities for applications on data processing, information encoding/decoding, communication and parallel data processing, and micromanipulations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY