Universal orbital angular momentum spectrum analyzer for beams

Abstract The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of beams provides a new dimension, and have already found lots of applications in various domains. Among such applications, the precisely and quantitatively diagnostic of intensity distributions among different OAM modes, namely the OAM spectrum of a beam, is of great significance. In this paper we propose and experimentally validate a simple interferential method to achieve this goal. By analyzing the interference pattern formed by the beam and a reference field, the OAM spectrum can be obtained instantaneously. Furthermore, the proposed method is also available for more complex light fields, for instance, the multi-ring optical vortices. In the proof-of-concept experiment, the OAM spectra of both single-mode and N -fold multiplexed OAM modes with various intensity distributions are well detected. Our work offers a new way to precisely measure the OAM spectra of beams and will advance the development of many applications ranging from classical to quantum physics as the OAM based large-capacity data transmissions, rotation detection, quantum manipulation and so on.