We describe the fabrication and characterization of a high-quality spiral phase plate as a device to generate optical vortices of low (3-5) specified charge at visible wavelengths. The manufacturing process is based on a molding technique and allows for the production of high-precision, smooth spiral phase plates as well as for their replication. An attractive feature of this process is that it permits the fabrication of nominally identical spiral phase plates made from different materials and thus yielding different vortex charges. When such a plate is inserted in the waist of a fundamental Gaussian beam, the resultant far-field intensity profile shows a rich vortex structure, in excellent agreement with diffraction calculations based on ideal spiral phase plates. Using a simple optical test, we show that the reproducibility of the manufacturing process is excellent.
We describe a simple experiment that is ideally suited to analyze the high-dimensional entanglement contained in the orbital angular momenta ͑OAM͒ of entangled photon pairs. For this purpose we use a two-photon interferometer with a built-in image rotator and measure the two-photon visibility versus rotation angle. Mode selection with apertures allows one to tune the dimensionality of the entanglement; mode selection with spiral phase plates and fibers allows detection of a single OAM mode. The experiment is analyzed in two different ways: either via the continuous two-photon amplitude function or via a discrete modal ͑Schmidt͒ decomposition of this function. The latter approach proves to be very fruitful, as it provides a complete characterization of the OAM entanglement.
We have fabricated high-quality, half-integral spiral phase plates for generating optical vortices at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. When inserted in the waist of a fundamental Gaussian beam, such a device gives rise to a rich vortex structure in the far field. The near-perfect cancellation of the effect induced by two nominally identical phase plates shows that we have excellent control of the manufacturing process.
This work describes the functional characterization of novel photoreplicated anisotropic lenses obtained from molds with different curvatures. These lenses were prepared by the photopolymerization of mixtures of a reactive liquid‐crystalline bisacrylate and non‐reactive derivatives of liquid‐crystalline cyanobiphenyl. The phase diagrams, the polymerization kinetics as a function of temperature, and the birefringence as a function of temperature for various mixtures were determined. For the fabrication of lenses, the average liquid‐crystal (LC) director of the mixtures has to be aligned in a single direction. Photoalignment and rubbing techniques were investigated to create a monodomain of the reactive material. Finally, optimal mixtures were used for the fabrication of anisotropic lenses. Aberrations were below 20 mλ root mean square (rms), which makes these LC lenses interesting for application in light paths, for example, as spherical aberration correction devices for dual‐ (or multiple‐) layer optical storage.
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