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Controlled generation of higher-order Poincaré sphere beams from a laser

Abstract

The angular momentum of light can be described by positions on a higher-order Poincaré sphere, where superpositions of spin and orbital angular momentum states give rise to laser beams that have many applications, from microscopy to materials processing. Many techniques exist to create such beams but none so far allow their creation at the source. Here we report on a new class of laser that is able to generate all states on the higher-order Poincaré sphere. We exploit geometric phase control inside a laser cavity to map polarization to orbital angular momentum, demonstrating that the orbital angular momentum degeneracy of a standard laser cavity may be broken, producing pure orbital angular momentum beams, and that generalized vector vortex beams may be created with high purity at the source. This work paves the way to new lasers for structured light based on intracavity geometric phase control.

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Figure 1: HOP sphere representation of vector vortex beams.
Figure 2: Laser concept.
Figure 3: Mode purity of OAM beams.
Figure 4: Measured HOP sphere beams.
Figure 5: HOP sphere beams with a larger topological charge.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

A.F. conceived the idea and supervised the project; D.N. performed the experiments with assistance from I.L. and A.D.; F.S.R. and I.L. performed the mathematical analysis; D.N. performed the data analysis; B.P. and L.M. manufactured the q-plate and assisted with analysis; A.F. and D.N. wrote the paper with inputs from all co-authors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew Forbes.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Naidoo, D., Roux, F., Dudley, A. et al. Controlled generation of higher-order Poincaré sphere beams from a laser. Nature Photon 10, 327–332 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.37

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