Open Access
12 December 2019 Generation and decomposition of scalar and vector modes carrying orbital angular momentum: a review
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Abstract

Orbital angular momentum (OAM), one of the most recently discovered degrees of freedom of light beam field has fundamentally revolutionized optical physics and its technological capabilities. Optical beams with OAM have enabled a large variety of applications, including super-resolution imaging, optical trapping, classical and quantum optical communication, and quantum computing, to mention a few. To enable these and several other emerging applications, optical beams with OAM have been generated using a variety of methods and technologies, such as a simple astigmatic lens pair, one-/two-dimensional holographic optical elements, three-dimensional spiral phase plates, optical fibers, and recent entrants such as metasurfaces. All these techniques achieve spatial light modulation and can be implemented with either passive elements or active devices, such as liquid crystal on silicon and digital micromirror devices. Many of these devices and technologies are not only used for the generation of amplitude phase-polarization structured light beams but are also capable of analyzing them. We have attempted to encompass a wide variety of such technologies as well as a few emerging methodologies, broadly categorized into generation and detection protocols. We address the needs of scientists and engineers who desire to generate/detect OAM modes and are looking for the technique (active or passive) best suited for their application.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Srinivas Pachava, Raghu Dharmavarapu, Anand Vijayakumar, Sruthy Jayakumar, Amogh Manthalkar, Awakash Dixit, Nirmal K. Viswanathan, Balaji Srinivasan, and Shanti Bhattacharya "Generation and decomposition of scalar and vector modes carrying orbital angular momentum: a review," Optical Engineering 59(4), 041205 (12 December 2019). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.59.4.041205
Received: 27 September 2019; Accepted: 20 November 2019; Published: 12 December 2019
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CITATIONS
Cited by 33 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Spiral phase plates

Spatial light modulators

Polarization

Digital micromirror devices

Optical engineering

Binary data

Holograms

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