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Photonics Research

Efficient separating orbital angular momentum mode with radial varying phase

Cheng Li, Shengmei Zhao

Published Jun 6, 2017• 34 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is shown that orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a promising new resource in future classical and quantum communications. However, the separation of OAM modes is still a big challenge. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient separation method with a radial varying phase. In the method, specific radial varying phases are designed and modulated for different OAM modes. The resultant beam is focused to the spots with different horizontal and vertical positions after a convex lens, when the coordinate transformation, including two optical elements with coordinate transformation phase and correct phase, operates on the received beam. The horizontal position of the spot is determined by the vortex phases, and the vertical position of the spot is dependent on the radial varying phases. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is feasible both for separation of two OAM modes and separation of three OAM modes. The proposed separation method is available in principle for any neighboring OAM modes because the radial varying phase is controlled. Additionally, no extra instruments are introduced, and there is no diffraction and narrowing process limitation for the separation.

DOI
10.1364/prj.5.000267

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It is shown that orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a promising new resource in future classical and quantum communications. However, the separation of OAM modes is still a big challenge. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient separation method with a radial varying phase. In the method, specific radial varying phases are designed and modulated for different OAM modes. The resultant beam is focused to the spots with different horizontal and vertical positions after a convex lens, when the coordinate transformation, including two optical elements with coordinate transformation phase and correct phase, operates on the received beam. The horizontal position of the spot is determined by the vortex phases, and the vertical position of the spot is dependent on the radial varying phases. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is feasible both for separation of two OAM modes and separation of three OAM modes. The proposed separation method is available in principle for any neighboring OAM modes because the radial varying phase is controlled. Additionally, no extra instruments are introduced, and there is no diffraction and narrowing process limitation for the separation.
A novel encoding method based on the orbital angular momentum (OAM) mode and radial mode of composite vortex beams is proposed. The superposition of two vortex beams generates 32 different types of composite vortex beams: one of them is a Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beam with a fixed OAM mode and radial mode, and the other is a LG beam containing four radial modes (p = 0, 1, 2, 3) and eight OAM modes with the same interval (l = ±3, ±5, ±7, ±9). A specially designed composite fork-shaped grating (CFG) is utilized to generate the intensity array pattern, and the received composite vortex beam is diffracted into a Gaussian beam with the relevant coordinates. Based on the coordinates and the number of bright rings in the intensity pattern, the OAM modes and radial modes of the two vortex beams composing the superposition state are determined, and finally the received composite vortex beam is decoded into the initially propagated information sequence. The correctness and effectiveness of the proposed encoding are confirmed through the comparative analysis of the correlation of the optical fields at both the transmitter and receiver in the two scenarios of interval and non-interval encoding. The proposed encoding method can significantly improve the efficiency of information transmission and its resistance to interference, holding great potential for future applications in free-space optical communication.
The most common approach to create orbital angular momentum (OAM) carrying vortex beams is by modulating a Gaussian beam with an azimuthal phase profile. This results in a beam with many radial modes and hence reduced power in the desired mode. Here we show that it is possible to select the mode size of the Laguerre-Gaussian basis so that the power in the detected p = 0 mode is maximised. We outline the idea theoretically and confirm it experimentally with both classical and quantum tests, demonstrating a power increase by as much as 50x. The consequence is higher signal-to- noise in optical communication and larger available dimensions in quantum entanglement experiments when using OAM modes as a basis.
Recently,the free space optical communication system based on orbital angular momentum( OAM) states multiplexing has become one of the hot topics in optical communications and quantum optics,because OAM states are new dimensional information carriers. An efficient orbital-angular-momentum-multiplexed free-space optical communication scheme is proposed,where the efficient orbital angular momentum states separation method is adopted. With this OAM separation method,different orbital angular momentum states can be obtained simultaneously from the superposition OAM state beam,which greatly saves time and the expensive devices for demodulating the information from the information-carrying OAM states. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed scheme can reduce time and the number of the devices at the receiver for the information retrieving. The bit error rate of the system can be less than 10- 4when the signal-to-noise ratio of the system is greater than 23 dB. Therefore,this OAMmultiplexed free-space optical communications scheme is proved to be feasible.
The desire to increase the amount of information that can be encoded onto a single photon has driven research into many areas of optics. One such area is optical orbital angular momentum (OAM) [1]. These beams have helical phasefronts and carry an orbital angular momentum of mbar per photon, where the integer m is unbounded, giving a large state space in which to encode information. We recently developed a telescope system comprising two bespoke refractive optical elements to transform OAM states into transverse momentum states [2]. This is achieved by mapping the azimuthal position of the input plane to the lateral position in the output [3]. A mapping of this type transforms a set of concentric rings at the input plane into a set of parallel lines in the output plane. A lens can then separate the resulting transverse momentum states into specified lateral positions, allowing for the efficient measurement of multiple OAM states simultaneously. Separating OAM states in this way presents an opportunity for this larger alphabet to improve the data capacity of a free space link and has potential application in both the classical and quantum regimes. We will present our latest design, increasing the bandwidth of measurable states to over 50 OAM modes. In such a system we study the crosstalk introduced by a thin phase turbulence, showing that turbulence similarly degrades the purity of all the modes within this range.
Beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) already play significant roles in many domains. Here we propose a practical design of an OAM beam splitter based on a single phase-only multi-ring azimuthal-quadratic diffraction optical element that can sort different OAM components into various spatial positions, and OAM state probing is also achieved. The performance is demonstrated through proof-of-principle experiments and shows favorable results. Furthermore, the intensity proportion of each OAM component, namely the OAM spectrum, is also diagnosed. This work offers high applicability and practicability for the recognition and separation of photon OAM, and thus paves the way for many advanced scenarios such as quantum communication, holographic encryption, and remote sensing.
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light is a promising degree of freedom for quantum communication and quantum computation. However, efficient methods to transform and measure OAM modes are still not available readily. Here, we propose a method for full quantum state tomography for arbitrary OAM states of light. The key component in our scheme is the helicity sorter, a device that can sort OAM modes of a light beam based on their Helicity. We present two setups to implement the Helicity sorted, one requires O(N)\mathcal{O}(N)O(N) number of optical elements for 2N2^N2N OAM modes, and the other uses spatial light modulators and is independent of the number of OAM modes. Ours is the first method to provide the efficient and scalable full quantum state tomography of the OAM modes and can be extremely important for quantum communication and quantum computation.