Abstract
Abstract 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.
Highlights
Optical vortex refers to a beam of photons that propagates with a singularity in phase taking the form of eilφ about its axis (φ is the azimuthal coordinate in the transverse plane and l is an integer quantum number) and has a topological structure on its wavefront with topological charge l arising from its helicoidal spatial wavefront around the phase singularity
It offers an opportunity to manipulate the wavefront embedding both the dynamic and geometric phase simultaneously, leading to the creation of complexed and multifunctional light beams. Yet another exotic optical vortex generation angular momentum (OAM) mode coined as perfect vortex beam, whose dark hollow area is immune to the topological charge, is able to be acquired based on geometric phase element [70, 71], Fourier transform optical system [72, 73], or tightly focused configuration [74]
We have briefly reviewed the latest developments in the field of optical vortex generation toward to the trend on compactness, high integration
Summary
Optical vortex refers to a beam of photons that propagates with a singularity in phase taking the form of eilφ about its axis (φ is the azimuthal coordinate in the transverse plane and l is an integer quantum number) and has a topological structure on its wavefront with topological charge l arising from its helicoidal spatial wavefront around the phase singularity. Besides the ability to transfer angular momentum to the object, the topologically protected and state unbounded properties of OAMs provide a potential to encode information in a new infinite freedom. This leads to a possible solution to the current massive data challenge and has the chance to dramatically boost the capacity of optical communication and data storage [31,32,33,34,35].
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