Spontaneous generation and active manipulation of real-space optical vortices

A new way to make spirals of light

29 April 2023

A novel way of making light beams with spiral structures promises to open up new applications for them.

Helical light beams are attracting much interest for use in diverse applications, including optical tweezers, optical computing and novel microscopy methods.

Current ways for making such optical vortices mostly employ structures that have singularities at their centres. But this prevents them from behaving in a particle-like manner, limiting their application.

Now, five researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea have demonstrated a very different way of making optical vortices.

Consisting of an ultrathin nickel layer sandwiched between two layers of silicon dioxide lying on top of an aluminium mirror, their device can be controlled by an applied magnetic field.

The researchers anticipate that their method will expand the use of optical vortices into new applications.

Supported content

References

1. Nature 611, 48–54 (2022). doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05229-4