Engineering of orbital angular momentum supermodes in coupled optical waveguides

Engineering of orbital angular momentum supermodes in coupled optical waveguides

In this work we demonstrate the existence of orbital angular momentum (OAM) bright and dark supermodes in a three-evanescently coupled cylindrical waveguides system. Bright and dark supermodes are characterized by their coupling and decoupling from one of the waveguides, respectively. In addition, we demonstrate that complex couplings between modes of different waveguides appear naturally due t...

Optical orbital angular momentum.

We present a brief introduction to the orbital angular momentum of light, the subject of our theme issue and, in particular, to the developments in the 13 years following the founding paper by Allen et al. (Allen et al. 1992 Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185)). The papers by our invited authors serve to bring the field up to date and suggest where developments may take us next...

Novel Detection of Optical Orbital Angular Momentum

Optical communications using orbital angular momentum beams

Orbital angular momentum (OAM), which describes the “phase twist” (helical phase pattern) of light beams, has recently gained interest due to its potential applications in many diverse areas. Particularly promising is the use of OAM for optical communications since: (i) coaxially propagating OAM beams with different azimuthal OAM states are mutually orthogonal, (ii) inter-beam crosstalk can be ...

Optical communication beyond orbital angular momentum

Mode division multiplexing (MDM) is mooted as a technology to address future bandwidth issues, and has been successfully demonstrated in free space using spatial modes with orbital angular momentum (OAM). To further increase the data transmission rate, more degrees of freedom are required to form a densely packed mode space. Here we move beyond OAM and demonstrate multiplexing and demultiplexin...