Polarization-controlled evolution of light transverse modes and associated Pancharatnam geometric phase in orbital angular momentum

Abstract

We present an easy, efficient and fast method to generate arbitrary linear combinations of light orbital angular momentum eigenstates $\ell =\pm 2$ starting from a linearly polarized TEM${}_{00}$ laser beam. The method exploits the spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion capability of a liquid-crystal-based $q$-plate and a Dove prism inserted in a Sagnac polarizing interferometer. The nominal generation efficiency is 100\%, being limited only by reflection and scattering losses in the optical components. When closed paths are followed on the polarization Poincaré sphere of the input beam, the associated Pancharatnam geometric phase is transferred unchanged to the orbital angular momentum state of the output beam.

5 pages and 5 figures

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• Hypergeometric-Gaussian Modes
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Cited by in corpus (12)

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• Photon spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion via an electrically tunable $q$-plate
• State transfer based on classical nonseparability
• Radial coherent and intelligent states of paraxial wave equation
• Identifying orbital angular momentum of vectorial vortices with Pancharatnam phase and Stokes parameters
• Hamilton's turns as visual tool-kit for designing of single-qubit unitary gates
• Liquid crystal spatial-mode converters for the orbital angular momentum of light
• Three-qubit topological phase on entangled photon pairs
• Measuring the non-separability of vector modes with digital micromirror devices