Orbital angular momentum bistability in a microlaser

Abstract

Light's orbital angular momentum (OAM) is an unbounded degree of freedom emerging in helical beams that appears very advantageous technologically. Using a chiral microlaser, i.e. an integrated device that allows generating an emission carrying a net OAM, we demonstrate a regime of bistability involving two modes presenting distinct OAM (L = 0 and L = 2). Furthermore, thanks to an engineered spin-orbit coupling of light in the device, these modes also exhibit distinct polarization patterns, i.e. cirular and azimuthal polarizations. Using a dynamical model of rate euqations, we show that this bistability arises from polarization-dependent saturation of the gain medium. Such a bistable regime appears very promising for implementing ultrafast optical switches based on the OAM of light. As well, it paves the way to the exploration of dynamical processes involving phase and polarization vortices.

References in corpus (6)

• Cavity Optomechanics
• Entanglement of Orbital Angular Momentum States of Photons
• Spin-orbit interactions of light
• Twisted Photons: New Quantum Perspectives in High Dimensions
• Optically controlling the emission chirality of microlasers
• Spin Textures of Polariton Condensates in a Tunable Microcavity with Strong Spin-Orbit Interaction

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spontaneous coherence in spatially extended photonic systems: Non-Equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation
• Realization of all-optical vortex switching in exciton-polariton condensates
• Classical and Quantum Chaos in Chirally-Driven, Dissipative Bose-Hubbard Systems
• Chiral condensates in a polariton hexagonal ring