Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers
Abstract
Harnessing the Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) of light is an appealing approach to developing photonic technologies for future applications in optical communications and high- dimensional Quantum Key Distributions (QKD). An outstanding challenge to the widespread uptake of the OAM resource is its efficient generation. We design a new device which can directly emit an OAM-carrying light beam. By fabricating micro-scale Spiral Phase Plates (SPPs) within the aperture of a Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSELs), the linearly polarized Gaussian beam emitted by the VCSEL is converted into a beam carrying specific OAM modes and their superposition states with high efficiency and high beam quality. The innovative OAM emitter opens a new horizon in the field of OAM-based optical and quantum communications, especially for short reach data interconnects and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).
Cite
@article{arxiv.1502.06773,
title = {Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers},
author = {Huanlu Li and David Phillips and Xuyang Wang and Daniel Ho and Lifeng Chen and Xiaoqi Zhou and Jiangbo Zhu and Siyuan Yu and Xinlun Cai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.06773},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
13 pages, 4 figures