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Review of Scientific Instruments

A motorized rotation mount for the switching of an optical beam path in under 20 ms using polarization control

Adarsh P. Raghuram, Jonathan M. Mortlock, Sarah Bromley, Simon L. Cornish

Published Jun 1, 2023• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a simple motorized rotation mount for a half-wave plate that can be used to rapidly change the polarization of light. We use the device to switch a high power laser beam between different optical dipole traps in an ultracold atom experiment. The device uses a stepper motor with a hollow shaft, which allows a beam to propagate along the axis of the motor shaft, minimizing inertia and mechanical complexity. A simple machined adapter is used to mount the wave plate. We characterize the performance of the device, focusing on its capability to switch a beam between the output ports of a polarizing beam splitter cube. We demonstrate a switching time of 15.9(3) ms, limited by the torque of the motor. The mount has a reaction time of 0.52(3) ms and a rotational resolution of 0.45(4)°. The rotation is highly reproducible, with the stepper motor not missing a step in 2000 repeated tests over 11 h.

DOI
10.1063/5.0139647

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We present a simple motorized rotation mount for a half-wave plate that can be used to rapidly change the polarization of light. We use the device to switch a high power laser beam between different optical dipole traps in an ultracold atom experiment. The device uses a stepper motor with a hollow shaft, which allows a beam to propagate along the axis of the motor shaft, minimizing inertia and mechanical complexity. A simple machined adapter is used to mount the wave plate. We characterize the performance of the device, focusing on its capability to switch a beam between the output ports of a polarizing beam splitter cube. We demonstrate a switching time of 15.9(3) ms, limited by the torque of the motor. The mount has a reaction time of 0.52(3) ms and a rotational resolution of 0.45(4)°. The rotation is highly reproducible, with the stepper motor not missing a step in 2000 repeated tests over 11 h.
We present a simple motorised rotation mount for a half-wave plate that can be used to rapidly change the polarization of light. We use the device to switch a high power laser beam between different optical dipole traps in an ultracold atom experiment. The device uses a stepper motor with a hollow shaft, which allows a beam to propagate along the axis of the motor shaft, minimising inertia and mechanical complexity. A simple machined adapter is used to mount the wave plate. We characterise the performance of the device, focusing on its capability to switch a beam between the output ports of a polarizing beamsplitter cube. We demonstrate a switching time of 15.9(3) ms, limited by the torque of the motor. The mount has a reaction time of 0.52(3) ms, and a rotational resolution of 0.45 degrees. The rotation is highly reproducible, with the stepper motor not missing a step in 2000 repeated tests over 11 hours.
We describe the construction of a motorized optical rotation mount with a 40 mm clear aperture. The device is used to remotely control the power of large diameter laser beams for a magneto-optical trap. A piezo-electric ultrasonic motor on a printed circuit board provides rotation with a precision better than 0.03° and allows for a very compact design. The rotation unit is controlled from a computer via serial communication, making integration into most software control platforms straightforward.
The application of integrated photonic technologies to quantum optics has recently enabled a wealth of breakthrough experiments in several quantum information areas. In particular, femtosecond laser written optical circuits revealed to be the ideal tool for investigating the features of polarization encoded qubits. However, the difficulty of integrating half and quarter wave plates in such circuits avoids the possibility to perform arbitrary rotations of the polarization state of photons on chip. Femtosecond laser written waveguides intrinsically exhibit a certain degree of birefringence and thus they could be exploited as integrated waveplates. In practice, the direction of the birefringence axes of the waveguides is the same of the propagation direction of the writing femtosecond laser beam, namely perpendicular to the substrate surface. Its fine rotation in a controlled fashion, preserving the accuracy of the positioning of the laser focal spot required by the fabrication process, is extremely challenging. In order to achieve this goal, we combine a high NA (1.4) focusing objective partially filled with a reduced diameter writing beam. In this way, the translation of the beam with respect to the objective center produces a rotation of the focusing direction, without altering the focal spot position. With this method we are able to tilt the birefringence axes of the waveguides up to 45°, and thus to use them as integrated light polarization rotators. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of these components, we developed a fully integrated device capable to perform the quantum tomography of an arbitrary two-photon polarization state.
The study of quantum cryptography is one of the great interest. A straightforward and reliable quantum experiment is provided in this paper. A half wave plate in linearly polarized light makes up a simplified polarization rotator. The polarization rotates twice as much as the half wave plate's fast axis' angle with the polarization plane when the half wave plate is rotated. Here, an experiment of message sharing is conducted to demonstrate quantum communication between parties. The unitary transformation is performed step by step using half-wave plates represented by the Mueller matrix. A simulation created using Python programming has been used to test the proposed protocol's implementation. Python was chosen because it can mathematically imitate the quantum state of superposition.
We realized a polarization-independent split-ratio-tunable optical beam splitter supporting two input and output ports through a stable interferometer. By adjusting the angle of a half-wave plate in the interferometer, we can tune the beam splitter reflectivities for both input ports from 0 to 1, regardless of the input light polarization. High-fidelity polarization-preserving transmission from input to output ports was verified by complete quantum process tomography. Nearly optimal interference effects at the beam splitter with various split ratios were observed by two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference for different input polarization states. Such a beam splitter could find a variety of applications in classical and quantum optical technologies.
Abstract The ultimate challenge for shaping technology is how to control the light field with a single optical element in a high-speed manner, wherein the spatial distribution of amplitude, phase or polarization are manipulated. Here we describe the use of the magneto optic effect to achieve the rapidly shaping of vector beams in real time using atomic ensemble. Firstly, the Faraday-rotation effect of vector beams is shown. On this basis, dynamically modulate the polarization of a vector beams on each point is implemented, and the polarization state of the manipulated beam is characterized with spatially resolved Stokes parameters measurements. The response time of this manipulation is about 40 μ s. The magnetic field high-speed switching and the dynamic manipulation capabilities of this method will be particularly useful for controlling light propagation through complex media and speed up the measurement of the properties of media.