Quantitatively measuring the orbital angular momentum density of light

Angela Dudley; Christian Schulze; Igor Litvin; Michael Duparré; Andrew Forbes

doi:10.1117/12.2026929

12 September 2013 Quantitatively measuring the orbital angular momentum density of light

Angela Dudley, Christian Schulze, Igor Litvin, Michael Duparré, Andrew Forbes

Proceedings Volume 8810, Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation X; 88100E (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2026929
Event: SPIE NanoScience + Engineering, 2013, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Although many techniques are efficient at measuring optical orbital angular momentum (OAM), they do not allow one to obtain a quantitative measurement for the OAM density across an optical field and instead only measure its global OAM. Numerous publications have demonstrated the transfer of local OAM to trapped particles by illustrating that particles trapped at different radial positions in an optical field rotate at different rotation rates. Measuring these rotation rates to quantitatively extract the OAM density is not only an indirect measurement but also a complicated experiment to execute. In this work we theoretically calculate and experimentally measure the OAM density of light, for both symmetric and non-symmetric optical fields. We outline a simple approach using only a spatial light modulator and a Fourier transforming lens to measure the OAM spectrum of an optical field and we test the approach on superimposed non-diffracting higher-order Bessel beams. We obtain quantitative measurements for the OAM density as a function of the radial position in the optical field for both symmetric and non-symmetric superpositions, illustrating good agreement with the theoretical prediction. The ability to measure the OAM distribution of optical fields has relevance in optical tweezing, and quantum information and processing.

Citation Download Citation

Angela Dudley, Christian Schulze, Igor Litvin, Michael Duparré, and Andrew Forbes "Quantitatively measuring the orbital angular momentum density of light", Proc. SPIE 8810, Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation X, 88100E (12 September 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2026929

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available