Monolithic Spiral Metalens for Ultrahigh‐Capacity and Single‐Shot Sorting of Full Angular Momentum State

Abstract

AbstractSorting orbital angular momentum (OAM) and spin angular momentum (SAM) of photons is crucial for optical communications, optical storage, and quantum information processing, wherein complicated optical setups or bulky devices are conventionally utilized to determine the angular momentum via repetitive interference or diffractive projection measurements. Recently, advancements in compact and single‐shot OAM detection have been made via coordinate transformation metasurfaces. Nevertheless, most of these strategies require precise separation and alignment between multiple components and cannot simultaneously distinguish full angular momentum states. Besides, the single‐shot maximum identifiable OAM mode numbers are generally limited to 60 due to the tradeoff between the mode space and reduced‐cross‐talk mode interval. Here, this work puts forward and experimentally demonstrates a monolithic spiral metalens (SML) for ultrahigh‐capacity sorting full angular momentum states. The SML focus the incident vortex beam into multiple‐turn spiral ring rather than a circle ring on the focal plane according to its topological charge, with the mode order ranging from −250 to 250. Consequently, the maximum identifiable OAM mode number is up to 168 under a single‐shot measurement, which largely surpass the best results reported hitherto. The experimental results obtained in the telecom band underpin the design approach, which may find great potential in high‐capacity communication and storage applications.