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Orbital angular momentum lasers

Nature Reviews Physics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Light can be tailored to carry angular momentum well beyond the restriction of its two spin states, left- and right-circularly polarized light, by imbuing it with orbital angular momentum (OAM). OAM is controlled by imparting finer and finer azimuthal phase gradients, twisting the wavefront ever tighter in one of two helicities, clockwise or anticlockwise. This can be done directly within a laser — OAM lasers — by imprinting an intracavity twist on the circulating light, but it requires judicious laser cavity design to break nature’s angular momentum degeneracy. Without this, the laser produces equal measures of both helicities, for no net OAM. We review the physics of OAM lasers, covering diverse symmetry-breaking approaches such as gain or loss control, asymmetric cavity geometries and geometric phase control. Structured matter allows this symmetry breaking to be done at the microscale and nanoscale, for OAM lasers based on topological matter, photonic crystals and optical breaking of chiral symmetry in microring cavities, as well as leveraging non-Hermitian photonic design at exceptional points. The exciting prospect of using structured matter to engineer twisted light is discussed along with the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Key points

  • Light can carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) if its phase is given an azimuthal twist in one of two helicities, clockwise or anticlockwise, any integer number of times for an infinitely large OAM alphabet.

  • In OAM lasers, the OAM is imprinted on the light directly within the cavity during the resonant process, with the requirement of chiral symmetry breaking and the subsequent removal of helicity degeneracy within the laser.

  • OAM lasers come in all shapes and sizes, from bulky solid-state devices for high power, to microsized on-chip solutions for easy integration into electro-optical systems.

  • Advanced quantum symmetry and topology concepts offer new opportunities for asymmetric light control, enabling precise and arbitrary phase-front engineering.

  • Integration of OAM lasers into practical systems remains largely unexplored.

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Fig. 1: Visualizing the angular momentum of light.
Fig. 2: An example of orbital angular momentum degeneracy.
Fig. 3: Symmetry-breaking approaches in bulk orbital angular momentum lasers.
Fig. 4: Symmetry-breaking approaches in on-chip orbital angular momentum lasers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Andrew Forbes & Light Mkhumbuza

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Liang Feng

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  2. Light Mkhumbuza
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  3. Liang Feng
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Forbes, A., Mkhumbuza, L. & Feng, L. Orbital angular momentum lasers. Nat Rev Phys (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00715-2

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