An Article by ECE Researchers selected for Spotlight on Optics

 
Dr. Michael Escuti

An article written by Drs. Michael Escuti, Jihwan Kim and Yanming Li has been selected for inclusion in "Spotlight on Optics".

Spotlight on Optics (Spotlight) features articles nominated by The Optical Society's (OSA) Topical and Associate Editors to show the breadth and quality of OSA content from six major technical divisions: Information Acquisitions, Processing, and Display; Light-Matter Interactions; Optical Design and Instrumentation; Optics in Biology; Optoelectronics; and Vision and Color.

"In this work," says Dr. Escuti,  "we study a novel optical element that efficiently controls a quantum property of light, its orbital angular momentum (OAM). Among other applications, OAM is useful in studying and manipulating individual cells, molecules, and nanoparticles, as well as in high-capacity optical telecommunication systems. Our new optical element, called a Forked Polarization Grating ("FPG"), can easily change OAM with ~100% efficiency, replacing entire lab benches full of optics in a single thin film. In one configuration, FPGs can nonmechanically switch between various states with simple applied voltages. In another configuration, FPGs can generate and detect OAM states. In our work, we show for the first time that a thin liquid crystal layer, not unlike those in common LCDs, can experimentally realize all of the advantageous properties predicted theoretically, when holographically patterned to include the fork-shaped singularity."

 
Dr. Jihwan Kim

Dr. Escuti is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University. Dr. Kim is a Post Doctoral Research Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dr. Li is a Graduate Research Assistant.

Read the Abstract and Full Article.

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