Abstract

The investigations on optical angular momenta and their interactions have broadened our knowledge of light’s behavior at sub-wavelength scales. Recent studies further unveil the extraordinary characteristics of transverse spin angular momentum in confined light fields and orbital angular momentum in optical vortices. Here we demonstrate a direct interaction between these two intrinsic quantities of light. By engineering the transverse spin in the evanescent wave of a whispering-gallery-mode-based optical vortex emitter, a spin-orbit interaction is observed in generated vortex beams. Inversely, this unconventional spin-orbit interplay further gives rise to an enhanced spin-direction locking effect in which waveguide modes are unidirectionally excited, with the directionality jointly controlled by the spin and orbital angular momenta states of light. The identification of this previously unknown pathway between the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of light enriches the spin-orbit interaction phenomena, and can enable various functionalities in applications such as communications and quantum information processing.

Details

Title
Spin-orbit interaction of light induced by transverse spin angular momentum engineering
Author
Shao, Zengkai 1 ; Zhu, Jiangbo 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Chen, Yujie 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Zhang, Yanfeng 1 ; Yu, Siyuan 3 

1  School of Electronics and Information Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China 
2  Photonics Group, School of Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Engineering Maths, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK 
3  School of Electronics and Information Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; Photonics Group, School of Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Engineering Maths, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK 
Pages
1-11
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Mar 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03237-5
ProQuest document ID
2009877805
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.