Generation and Detection of Structured Light: A Review

Abstract

Structured light beams have rapidly advanced over the past few years, from specific spatial-transverse/longitudinal structure to tailored spatiotemporal structure. Such beams with diverse spatial structures or spatiotemporal structures have brought various breakthroughs to many fields, including optical communications, optical sensing, micromanipulation, quantum information processing, and super-resolution imaging. Thus, plenty of methods have been proposed, and lots of devices have been manufactured to generate structured light beams by tailoring the structures of beams in the space domain and the space–time domain. In this paper, we firstly give a brief introduction of different types of structured light. Then, we review the recent research progress in the generation and detection of structured light on different platforms, such as free space, optical fiber, and integrated devices. Finally, challenges and perspectives are also discussed.

Remote Measurement of the Angular Velocity Vector Based on Vectorial Doppler Effect Using Air-Core Optical Fiber

“…Among different types of light beams, the helical phase light field, whose phase pattern of the oscillation amplitude possesses a transverse spatial structure, is considered a typical scalar beam [29][30][31][32][33][34]. In contrast, the vector state of the light field means that its polarization pattern is not inhomogeneously distributed transversely, and it is also termed as a vectorial polarization field [35][36][37][38][39]. In recent years, such light fields have been extensively studied and rapidly developed in multifarious applications such as super-resolution imaging, laser machining, quantum information, optical tracking, and optical sensing [40][41][42][43][44][45][46].…”

Orbital angular momentum of structurally stable laser beams

“…В последнее время уделяется большое внимание структурированному свету. Имеется несколько обзорных работ, в которых описываются генерация и детектирование такого света [1,2]. Такой свет можно генерировать как с помощью лазеров [3,4], так и с помощью оптических компонент вне резонатора (например, с помощью астигматического конвертора [5]).…”

Structured Light Laser Based on Intra-Cavity Modulation

“…With a circularly polarized optical vortex incident on the metal, chiral nanostructures can be produced by transferring the helicity in vortex light to nanostructures [19,20]. (5) Measurement: The rotational Doppler shift appeared while vortex beams were vertically indenting on the rotating object, which has been broadly researched in many cases, such as the detection of apparatus vibrations [21], measurement of angular velocity, and acceleration of non-contact objects [22][23][24].…”