Dynamics of optical vortices in 2D materials

Optical vortices in planar geometries are a universal wave phenomenon, where electromagnetic waves possess topologically protected integer values of orbital angular momentum (OAM). The conservation of OAM governs their dynamics, including their rules of creation and annihilation. However, such dynamics remained so far beyond experimental reach. Here, we present a first observation of creation and annihilation of optical vortex pairs. The vortices conserve their combined OAM during pair creation/annihilation events and determine the field profile throughout their motion between these events. We utilize free electrons in an ultrafast transmission electron microscope to probe the vortices, which appear in the form of phonon polaritons in the 2D material hexagonal boron nitride. These results provide the first observation of optical vortices in any 2D material, which were predicted but never observed. Our findings promote future investigation of vortices in 2D materials and their use for chiral plasmonics, toward the control of selection rules in light-matter interactions and the creation of optical simulators of phase transitions in condensed matter physics.

Optical metasurfaces for generating and manipulating optical vortex beams

Optical vortices (OVs) carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted considerable interest in the field of optics and photonics owing to their peculiar optical features and extra degree of freedom for carrying information. Although there have been significant efforts to realize OVs using conventional optics, it is limited by large volume, high cost, and lack of design flexibility. Optical metasurfaces have recently attracted tremendous interest due to their unprecedented capability in the manipulation of the amplitude, phase, polarization, and frequency of light at a subwavelength scale. Optical metasurfaces have revolutionized design concepts in photonics, providing a new platform to develop ultrathin optical devices for the realization of OVs at subwavelength resolution. In this article, we will review the recent progress in optical metasurface-based OVs. We provide a comprehensive discussion on the optical manipulation of OVs, including OAM superposition, OAM sorting, OAM multiplexing, OAM holography, and nonlinear metasurfaces for OAM generation and manipulation. The rapid development of metasurface for OVs generation and manipulation will play an important role in many relevant research fields. We expect that metasurface will fuel the continuous progress of wearable and portable consumer electronics and optics where low-cost and miniaturized OAM related systems are in high demand.

Пучки Гельмгольца--Гаусса с квадратичной радиальной зависимостью

A new class of localized solutions of paraxial parabolic equation is introduced. Each solution is a product of some Gaussian-type localized axisymmetric function (different from the fundamental mode) and an amplitude factor. The latter can be expressed via an arbitrary solution of the Helmholtz equation on an auxiliary two-sheet complex surface. The class under consideration contains well known and novel solutions, including those describing optical vortices of various orders.

Shack-Hartmann Wavefront Sensing of Ultrashort Optical Vortices

Light beams carrying Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM), also known as optical vortices (OV), have led to fascinating new developments in fields ranging from quantum communication to novel light–matter interaction aspects. Even though several techniques have emerged to synthesize these structured-beams, their detection, in particular, single-shot amplitude, wavefront, and modal content characterization, remains a challenging task. Here, we report the single-shot amplitude, wavefront, and modal content characterization of ultrashort OV using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. These vortex beams are obtained using spiral phase plates (SPPs) that are frequently used for high-intensity applications. The reconstructed wavefronts display a helical structure compatible with the topological charge induced by the SPPs. We affirm the accuracy of the optical field reconstruction by the wavefront sensor through an excellent agreement between the numerically backpropagated and experimentally obtained intensity distribution at the waist. Consequently, through Laguerre–Gauss (LG) decomposition of the reconstructed fields, we reveal the radial and azimuthal mode composition of vortex beams under different conditions. The potential of our method is further illustrated by characterizing asymmetric Gaussian vortices carrying fractional average OAM, and a realtime topological charge measurement at a 10Hz repetition rate. These results can promote Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing as a single-shot OV characterization tool.

Quantifying the quality of optical vortices by evaluating their intensity distributions

Optical vortices are widely used in optics and photonics, ranging from microscopy and communications to astronomy. However, little work has been done to quantify the quality of scalar optical vortices. Since the quality of an optical vortex affects measurements and conclusions derived from their use, development of tools to evaluate the vortex quality is crucial. Moreover, the quality of a vortex strongly depends on the application. Therefore, this work aims to establish metrics for the evaluation of optical vortex quality. We propose to evaluate vortex quality using the following intensity parameters: eccentricity of the intensity distribution, cross-sectional peak-to-valley measurements, cross-sectional peak difference, and the ratio of the ring width to the vortex core diameter (doughnut-ratio). These parameters can be used as a guide for the quality of optical vortices depending on their implementation for specific optical technologies.

The investigation of the features optical vortices focusing by ring gratings with the variable height using high-performance computer systems

The diffraction of vortex laser beams with circular polarization by ring gratings with the variable height was investigated in this paper. Modelling of near zone diffraction is numerically investigated by the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The changes in the length size of the light needle and focal spot size are shown depending on the type of the ring grating.