Spin-Orbit Mapping of Light

Phys Rev Lett. 2021 Dec 3;127(23):233901. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.233901.

Abstract

Spin-orbit photonics, involving the interaction between the spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light, plays an important role in modern optics. Here, we present the spin-orbit mapping of light in a few-mode fiber that originates from the mode degeneracy lifting (TM_{01} and TE_{01}) property. We demonstrate two kinds of spin-orbit mapping phenomena, i.e., mapping from intrinsic SAM to OAM and mapping from polarization direction rotation to field pattern rotation. The demonstrated spin-orbit mapping shows high efficiency, large bandwidth, availability for short pulses, and scalability to high-order OAM states.