Thirty years ago, Coullet et al. proposed that a special optical field exists in laser cavities bearing some analogy with the superfluid vortex. Since then, optical vortices have been widely studied, inspired by the hydrodynamics sharing similar mathematics. Akin to a fluid vortex with a central flow singularity, an optical vortex beam has a phase singularity with a certain topological charge, giving rise to a hollow intensity distribution. Such a beam with helical phase fronts and orbital angular momentum reveals a subtle connection between macroscopic physical optics and microscopic quantum optics. These amazing properties provide a new understanding of a wide range of optical and physical phenomena, including twisting photons, spin-orbital interactions, Bose-Einstein condensates, etc., while the associated technologies for manipulating optical vortices have become increasingly tunable and flexible. Hitherto, owing to these salient properties and optical manipulation technologies, tunable vortex beams have engendered tremendous advanced applications such as optical tweezers, high-order quantum entanglement, and nonlinear optics. This article reviews the recent progress in tunable vortex technologies along with their advanced applications.

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Optical vortices 30 years on: OAM manipulation from topological charge to multiple singularities

Compared with conventional optical elements, 2D photonic metasurfaces, consisting of arrays of antennas with subwavelength thickness (the ‘meta-atoms’), enable the manipulation of light–matter interactions on more compact platforms. The use of metasurfaces with spatially varying arrangements of meta-atoms that have subwavelength lateral resolution allows control of the polarization, phase and amplitude of light. Many exotic phenomena have been successfully demonstrated in linear optics; however, to meet the growing demand for the integration of more functionalities into a single optoelectronic circuit, the tailorable nonlinear optical properties of metasurfaces will also need to be exploited. In this Review, we discuss the design of nonlinear photonic metasurfaces — in particular, the criteria for choosing the materials and symmetries of the meta-atoms — for the realization of nonlinear optical chirality, nonlinear geometric Berry phase and nonlinear wavefront engineering. Finally, we survey the application of nonlinear photonic metasurfaces in optical switching and modulation, and we conclude with an outlook on their use for terahertz nonlinear optics and quantum information processing. Photonic metasurfaces can be used to control the polarization, phase and amplitude of light. Nonlinear metasurfaces enable giant nonlinear optical chirality, realization of the geometric Berry phase, wavefront engineering, and optical switching and modulation, and hold potential for on-chip applications.

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Nonlinear photonic metasurfaces

Light fields carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) provide powerful capabilities for applications in optical communications, microscopy, quantum optics, and microparticle manipulation. We introduce a property of light beams, manifested as a temporal OAM variation along a pulse: the self-torque of light. Although self-torque is found in diverse physical systems (i.e., electrodynamics and general relativity), it was not realized that light could possess such a property. We demonstrate that extreme-ultraviolet self-torqued beams arise in high-harmonic generation driven by time-delayed pulses with different OAM. We monitor the self-torque of extreme-ultraviolet beams through their azimuthal frequency chirp. This class of dynamic-OAM beams provides the ability for controlling magnetic, topological, and quantum excitations and for manipulating molecules and nanostructures on their natural time and length scales.

Generation of extreme-ultraviolet beams with time-varying orbital angular momentum

Optical vortices are currently one of the most intensively studied topics in optics. These light beams, which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), have been successfully utilized in the visible and infrared in a wide variety of applications. Moving to shorter wavelengths may open up completely new research directions in the areas of optical physics and material characterization. Here, we report on the generation of extreme-ultraviolet optical vortices with femtosecond duration carrying a controllable amount of OAM. From a basic physics viewpoint, our results help to resolve key questions such as the conservation of angular momentum in highly nonlinear light-matter interactions, and the disentanglement and independent control of the intrinsic and extrinsic components of the photon's angular momentum at short-wavelengths. The methods developed here will allow testing some of the recently proposed concepts such as OAM-induced dichroism, magnetic switching in organic molecules and violation of dipolar selection rules in atoms.

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Tunable orbital angular momentum in high-harmonic generation.

Optical vortices, which carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), can be flexibly produced and measured with infrared and visible light. Their application is an important research topic for super-resolution imaging, optical communications and quantum optics. However, only a few methods can produce OAM beams in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) or X-ray, and controlling the OAM on these beams remains challenging. Here we apply wave mixing to a tabletop high-harmonic source, as proposed in our previous work, and control the topological charge (OAM value) of XUV beams. Our technique enables us to produce first-order OAM beams with the smallest possible central intensity null at XUV wavelengths. This work opens a route for carrier-injected laser machining and lithography, which may reach nanometre or even angstrom resolution. Such a light source is also ideal for space communications, both in the classical and quantum regimes.

Controlling the orbital angular momentum of high harmonic vortices

Optical vortices exhibit a corkscrew-like shape as they travel. The study of this phenomenon, known as singular optics, is now extended to the high-power regime where high-harmonic processes become evident. This type of radiation could help illuminate novel attosecond phenomena in atoms and molecules.

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Strong-field physics with singular light beams

Summary form only given. Light beams carrying an isolated point singularity with a screw-type phase distribution are called an optical vortex (OV) (Fig 1). The fact that in free space the Poynting vector of the beam gives the momentum flow leads to an orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the photons in such a singular beam, independent on the spin angular momentum [1]. There are many applications of optical OAM shown in literature that would benefit from the availability of optical vortex beams in all spectral regions. For example it was shown that transitions forbidden by selection rules in dipole approximation appear allowed when using photons with the additional degree of freedom of optical OAM [2]. However, the common techniques of producing new light frequencies by nonlinear optical processes seem problematic in conserving the optical vortex when the nonlinearity becomes large.We show that with the extremely nonlinear process of High Harmonic Generation (HHG) it is possible to transfer OVs from the near-infrared to the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) [3] at wavelengths down to ~30 nm.We use a conventional HHG setup, where Harmonics down to the 27th are produced in Argon gas by exposing it to ultrashort 30 fs laser pulses at 800 nm wavelength. In order to impose a helical phase front onto these driving pulses, we used a spatial light modulator (Fig 2). The observed light of several plateau harmonics was examined spatially and spectrally, while also two different tools to investigate the phase structure were employed. The spatial profile showed the expected singular behaviour, a dark region in the centre, although two separate "lobes" of intensity were observed. A phase feature that showed a shift of on opposing sides of the beam profile was found with a wavefront splitting technique. A screw-like phase evolution around the profile was also verified by employing a Hartmann type measurement.The generated spectrum revealed that in all Harmonic orders an OV was present. The profile however looked the same in all orders, indicating identical topological charge, which runs counterintuitive to the assumption that the phase of is multiplied by the order of the nonlinearity.

Extreme nonlinear optical processes with beams carrying orbital angular momentum

Light beams carrying an isolated point singularity with a screw-type phase distribution are called an optical vortex (OV). The fact that in free space the Poynting vector of the beam gives the momentum flow leads to an orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the photons in such a singular beam, independent on the spin angular momentun1. There are many applications of optical OAM shown in literature that would benefit from the availability of optical vortex beams in all spectral regions. For example it was shown that transitions forbidden by selection rules in dipole approximation appear allowed when using photons with the additional degree of freedom of optical OAM2. However, the common techniques of producing new light frequencies by nonlinear optical processes seem problematic in conserving the optical vortex when the nonlinearity becomes large. We show that with the extremely nonlinear process of High Harmonic Generation (HHG) it is possible to transfer OVs from the near-infrared to the extreme ultraviolet (XUV)3 at wavelengths down to ~30 nm. The observed XUV light was examined spatially and spectrally. The spatial profile showed the expected singular behavior, a dark region in the center. A comparison of the far-field fringe pattern caused by a thin wire with corresponding simulations suggests that the XUV vortex beam carries a unit topological charge. A screw-like phase evolution around the profile was also verified by employing a Hartmann type measurement. The generated spectrum revealed that in all Harmonic orders an OV was present. The profile, however, looked the same in all orders, indicating identical topological charge, which runs counterintuitive to the assumption that the phase of exp(–ilϕ) is multiplied by the harmonic order in a frequency up-conversion experiment. © (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

P. Hansinger

Papers

Strong-field physics with singular light beams

Extreme nonlinear optical processes with beams carrying orbital angular momentum

Extreme nonlinear optical processes with beams carrying orbital angular momentum