Simultaneous determination of the constituent azimuthal and radial mode indices for light fields possessing orbital angular momentum
Abstract
A wide array of diffractive structures such as arrays of pinholes, triangular apertures, slits, and holograms have all recently been used to measure the azimuthal index of individual Laguerre-Gaussian beams. Here, we demonstrate a powerful approach to simultaneously measure both the radial and azimuthal indices of pure Laguerre-Gaussian light fields using the method of principal component analysis. We find that the shape of the diffracting element used to measure the mode indices is in fact of little importance and the crucial step is training any diffracting optical system and transforming the observed pattern into uncorrelated variables. The method is generic and may be extended to other families of light fields such as Bessel or Hermite-Gaussian beams.
Citation
Mazilu , M , Mourka , A , Vettenburg , T , Wright , E M & Dholakia , K 2012 , ' Simultaneous determination of the constituent azimuthal and radial mode indices for light fields possessing orbital angular momentum ' , Applied Physics Letters , vol. 100 , no. 23 , 231115 . https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4728111
Publication
Applied Physics Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0003-6951Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2012 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters, Vol 100, Issue 23 and may be found online at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/100/23/10.1063/1.4728111
Description
This work received Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council funding.Collections
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