New Paper published in Nature Comms by CQP Researchers

(a) Measured emission from the device with λ=1556.35 nm and variable dissipated power on the resistive heating element. (b–f) Measured excitation spectra of the device with various heater voltages and the measured interferograms (for λ=1,556.35 nm) of the two polarization components of the beam with a Gaussian reference beam.

3 October 2014

A New Paper on "Fast electrical switching of orbital angular momentum modes using ultra-compact integrated vortex emitters"by CQP Researchers in collaboration with several other leading Photonics Groups has been published in Nature Communications.

The paper co-authored by researchers from the Centre for Quantum Photonics, Dr Xinlun Cai, Jianwei Wang, Prof. Jeremy O'Brien and Dr Mark Thompson explains how the ability to rapidly switch between orbital angular momentum modes of light has important implications for future classical and quantum systems.

It mentions that in general, orbital angular momentum beams are generated using free-space bulk optical components where the fastest reconfiguration of such systems is around a millisecond using spatial light modulators. In their work, an extremely compact optical vortex emitter is demonstrated with the ability to actively tune between different orbital angular momentum modes. The emitter is tuned using a single electrically contacted thermo-optical control, maintaining device simplicity and micron scale footprint. On–off keying and orbital angular momentum mode switching are achieved at rates of 10 μs and 20 μs respectively.

The paper which was published on the 17th September 2014 can be read on the Nature Communications website.