The rapid development of advanced optical technology has driven a strong demand for high-dimensional laser field manipulation, where the ability to tailor multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs) on-demand plays a crucial role. However, Due to the intrinsic characteristics of each DoF, step-by-step manipulation is often required to achieve customizable manipulation, struggling with bulky and complex components, limiting the scalability and integration of compact optical systems. Therefore, there is a highly desirable for compact and lightweight devices that can simultaneously tailor multiple DoFs on-demand in a simple, fast and accurate manner.
In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a team of scientists, led by Professor Shiyao Fu from School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, China, have demonstrated an intelligent hybrid strategy that enables simultaneous manipulation over wave vector, initial phase, spatial mode, amplitude, orbital angular momentum (OAM), and spin angular momentum (SAM), reaching a 288-imensional laser field. This advancement represents a significant step forward in high-dimensional photonics. The key innovation of this work lies in the AI-assisted hybrid strategy for simultaneous multi-DoF tailoring, leading to the establishment of a phase-only transmittance function. This phase-only property allows for easy integration into various diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and can be implemented using a wide range of birefringent materials, including polymeric liquid crystals, metasurfaces, and other anisotropic modulation dielectrics. These advantages pave the way for on-chip photonic devices that meet the evolving needs of advanced photonics. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, the research team realized their approach on a metasurface. Proof-of-principle experiments validated the accuracy and robustness of the proposed strategy, with experimental results closely aligning with theoretical predictions. The fabricated metasurface demonstrated exceptional performance in high-dimensional light field generation, achieving an average mean square error (MSE) of just 0.0036 in total angular momentum spectrum measurements. Moreover, since OAM has infinite eigen values, our approach can be further extended to even higher dimensions. This represents a significant leap in multiple DoFs, high-dimensional manipulation, showcasing the great protentional for the development in both classical and quantum optics.
What makes this breakthrough particularly exciting is the powerful capability of the hybrid strategy to tailor DoFs on demand, offering advantages in both scalability and simplicity. This proposal serves as an ideal candidate for integration into compact photonic devices or optical systems, holding significant potential to drive breakthroughs in high-dimensional laser field technologies and laying the foundation for future advancements in photonic applications.
