Manipulating optical vortices using integrated photonics

Abstract

Optical vortices (OVs) refer to a class of cylindrical optical modes with azimuthally varying phase terms arising either from polarization rotation or from the angular projection of the wave vector that at the quantum level corresponds to photon spin or orbital angular momenta. OVs have attracted the attention of researchers in many areas of optics and photonics, as their potential applications range from optical communications, optical manipulation, imaging, sensing, to quantum information. In recent years, integrated photonics has becomes an effective method of manipulating OVs. In this paper, the theoretical framework and experimental progress of integrated photonics for the manipulation of OVs were reviewed.

Keywords

optical vortex / orbital angular momentum / angular grating / micro-ring resonator

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge support by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2014CB340000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China-Key Research Project (Grant No. 61490715), and the EU Horizon2020 program under project ROAM.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg