Enhanced spin orbit interaction of light in highly confining optical fibers for mode division multiplexing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31624247.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-12401-4 and PMC identifier 6797754.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Light carries both orbital angular momentum (OAM) and spin angular momentum (SAM), related to wavefront rotation and polarization, respectively. These are usually approximately independent quantities, but they become coupled by light's spin-orbit interaction (SOI) in certain exotic geometries and at the nanoscale. Here we reveal a manifestation of strong SOI in fibers engineered at the micro-scale and supporting the only known example of propagating light modes with non-integer mean OAM. This enables propagation of a record number (24) of states in a single optical fiber with low cross-talk (purity > 93%), even as tens-of-meters long fibers are bent, twisted or otherwise handled, as fibers are practically deployed. In addition to enabling the investigation of novel SOI effects, these light states represent the first ensemble with which mode count can be potentially arbitrarily scaled to satisfy the exponentially growing demands of high-performance data centers and supercomputers, or telecommunications network nodes.