Spontaneous Formation of Vector Vortex Beams in Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers with Feedback.

Jesus Jimenez-Garcia,T Guillet,Pedro Rodriguez,T Ackemann

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.119.113902

Abstract

The spontaneous emergence of vector vortex beams with nonuniform polarization distribution is reported in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with frequency-selective feedback. Antivortices with a hyperbolic polarization structure and radially polarized vortices are demonstrated. They exist close to and partially coexist with vortices with uniform and nonuniform polarization distributions characterized by four domains of pairwise orthogonal polarization. The spontaneous formation of these nontrivial structures in a simple, nearly isotropic VCSEL system is remarkable and the vector vortices are argued to have solitonlike properties.

Highlights

Beams with a spatially non-uniform polarization distribution attracted a rapidly growing interest over the last years due to a combination of intrinsic appeal and beauty, novel fundamental aspects in quantum optics and newly enabled applications [1]
The spontaneous emergence of vector vortex beams with non-uniform polarization distribution is reported in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with frequency-selective feedback
Exciting is the realization that the correlation between spatial and polarization degrees of freedom might open up novel schemes for the use in quantum optics [11,12,13,14] and sensing [15]

Summary

Introduction

Beams with a spatially non-uniform polarization distribution attracted a rapidly growing interest over the last years due to a combination of intrinsic appeal and beauty, novel fundamental aspects in quantum optics and newly enabled applications [1]. The spontaneous emergence of vector vortex beams with non-uniform polarization distribution is reported in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with frequency-selective feedback. We will demonstrate the emergence of an anti-vortex as well as spiral and radially polarized vortices, depending on the anisotropies of the feedback scheme.

Results

Conclusion