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Polarization is a basic property of light. Different from well-known linear, circular, and elliptical polarizations, which are spatially homogeneous, a vector light beam with spatially variant polarization states has received increasing interest for its expanded functionalities. In this Letter, we present a visible-light communication link exploiting high-base vector beam encoding/decoding. Using a single phase-only spatial light modulator, we generate 16 states of vector beams representing hexadecimal numbers. In the visible-light communication link experiment, we transmit a random high-base number sequence with 10,000 hexadecimal numbers and a 64×64 pixel Lena gray image with 8192 hexadecimal numbers. The bit error rate is evaluated, and zero error among all received hexadecimal numbers is achieved, showing favorable link communication performance using the high-base vector beam encoding/decoding.

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Orbital angular momentum (OAM), which describes tailoring the spatial physical dimension of light waves into a helical phase structure, has given rise to many applications in optical manipulation, microscopy, imaging, metrology, sensing, quantum science, and optical communications. Light beams carrying OAM feature two distinct characteristics, i.e., inherent orthogonality and unbounded states in principle, which are suitable for capacity scaling of optical communications. In this paper, we give an overview of OAM and beyond in free-space optical communications. The fundamentals of OAM, concept of optical communications using OAM, OAM modulation (OAM modulation based on spatial light modulator, high-speed OAM modulation, spatial array modulation), OAM multiplexing (spectrally efficient, high capacity, long distance), OAM multicasting (adaptive multicasting, N-dimensional multicasting), OAM communications in turbulence (adaptive optics, digital signal processing, auto-alignment system), structured light communications beyond OAM (Bessel beams, Airy beams, vector beams), diverse and robust communications using OAM and beyond (multiple scenes, turbulence-resilient communications, intelligent communications) are comprehensively reviewed. The prospects and challenges of optical communications using OAM and beyond are also discussed at the end. In the future, there will be more opportunities in exploiting extensive advanced applications from OAM beams to more general structured light.

An ultra-short pulse current–voltage (I–V) measurement technique has been applied to high-κ gate transistors to investigate the effects of fast transient charging. It is shown that the fast electron trapping may contribute to the degradation of transistor performance (i.e., low mobility) observed with direct current (DC) characterization methods, as well as pulse techniques in the tens of microseconds range and above. In particular, in the samples with significant electron trapping, the drain current in the saturation regime is shown to improve by up to 40% from its DC values when the characterization is performed with pulse I–V measurements in the nanosecond range.

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Orbital angular momentum (OAM), one fundamental property of light, has been of great interest over the past decades. An ideal OAM generator, fully compatible with existing physical dimensions (wavelength and polarization) of light, would offer the distinct features of broadband, polarization diversity, and ultra-compact footprint. Here, we propose, design, fabricate, and demonstrate an ultra-compact chip-scale broadband polarization diversity OAM generator on a silicon platform with a 3.6 × 3.6 μm2 footprint. The silicon OAM chip is formed by introducing a subwavelength surface structure (superposed holographic fork gratings) on top of a silicon waveguide, coupling the in-plane waveguide mode to the out-plane free-space OAM mode. We demonstrate in theory and experiment the broadband generation of polarization diversity OAM modes (x-/y-polarized OAM+1/OAM−1) from 1500 to 1630 nm with high purity and efficiency. The demonstrations of an ultra-compact broadband polarization diversity OAM generator may open up new perspectives for OAM-assisted N-dimensional optical multiplexing communications/interconnects and high-dimensional quantum communication systems.