Generation and Manipulation of Optical Ferris Wheel by Nested Spiral-Array Plates

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum of light has attracted great attention in recent years. Optical ferris wheel, composed of the superposition of different orbital-angular-momentum modes, further broadens the application of orbital angular momentum of light in many fields. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a simple way to produce optical ferris wheel with controllable orbital-angular-momentum modes using a mask of spiral arrays. We show that optical ferris wheel can be rotated by adjusting the spiral arrays, and the rotation angle is studied analytically and experimentally. Our technique shows the advantages of wide operation bandwidth and flexible manipulation and the simplicity of our method may find potential application in optical manipulation.

Keywords

• Optical ferris wheel
• orbital angular momentum
• spiral arrays