| Description |
Light can carry both orbital angular momentum (OAM) and spin angular momentum (SAM), related to wavefront rotation and polarization, respectively. The ability to exploit these degrees of freedom in so-called optical vortices has spawned applications across the fields of opto-mechanics, sensing, telecommunications and manufacturing. In free space or bulk-optic media, SAM are OAM represent independent quantum numbers. However, from atomic and molecular systems, we also know that the presence of a confinement potential yields a spin-orbit interaction Hamiltonian that hybridises these states. Photonic analogues of such spin-orbit interactions are now accessible in optical fibers, since an optical waveguide is essentially a confining “potential” for light. In this talk, we will show how generation, stable propagation and nonlinear interactions of light beams containing phase or polarization singularities are both altered by, and, from a device perspective, benefit from engineering spin-orbit interactions of light via optical waveguide design.
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