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Abstract
Photopolymerization is a powerful technique to create arbitrary micro-objects with a high spatial resolution. Importantly, to date all photopolymerization studies have been performed with incident light fields with planar wavefronts and have solely exploited the intensity profile of the incident beam. We investigate photopolymerization with light fields possessing orbital angular momentum, characterized by the topological charge l. We show both experimentally and theoretically that, as a consequence of nonlinear self-focusing of the optical field, photopolymerization creates an annular-shaped vortex-soliton and an associated optical fiber, which breaks up into |l| solitons or microfibers. These microfibers exhibit helical trajectories with a chirality determined by the sign of l due to the orbital angular momentum of the light field and form a bundle of helical-microfibers. This research opens up a new application for light fields with orbital angular momentum, and our generated microfibers may have appli...
Highlights
Photopolymerization, the process of using ultraviolet (UV) light to activate polymerization within resins, is a powerful approach to create arbitrary, transparent micro-objects with a resolution below the diffraction limit.[1]
Due to self-focusing and self-trapping, the polymerized material can form a waveguide when irradiated by a Gaussian beam, which develops into a single-induced fiber, that can be as long as millimeters in length.[8â10] Importantly, to date all photopolymerization studies have been performed with incident light fields possessing planar wavefronts
Examples include studies in optical manipulation of both mesoscopic particles[14,15] and quantum gases,[16] micromachining,[17â19] and quantum information processing.[20,21]. In this Article, we investigate photopolymerization with an incident optical vortex and show for the first time that using such light fields that possess orbital angular momentum (OAM) for photopolymerization leads to âspiralingâ of the generated polymerized fibers, with a chirality determined by the sign of S
Summary
Photopolymerization, the process of using ultraviolet (UV) light to activate polymerization within resins, is a powerful approach to create arbitrary, transparent micro-objects with a resolution below the diffraction limit.[1]. Considering any point in the beam, the Poynting vector is perpendicular to the helical phase front and possesses an azimuthal momentum component. Such fields have a characteristic exp(±iSÏ) phase variation with Ï the azimuthal angle in cylindrical coordinates, and may be described by Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) transverse modes.[13] The topological charge or azimuthal index S of the beam denotes the integer multiple of 2Ï that the field phase accumulates upon circling the beam center. ACS Photonics microfibers, each of which exhibit helical trajectories and together form a bundle of helical microfibers This represents a new physical manifestation of the use of OAM light fields. Our work adds a new facet to the emergent field of helical fibers that have themselves recently come to the fore in the photonic crystal community as a route to generating fields with OAM.[22,23]
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