Topological lasers generating and multiplexing topological light

Understand

Vortices are topologically stable singularities at the center of a swirl of energy.

• Optical vortices are conventionally formed using diffractive optics or by bespoke optical elements.
• We report room temperature integrated lasers directly generating and multiplexing coherent beams carrying arbitrarily large orbital angular momenta (OAM).
• The OAM beams are created using two-dimensional topological-rings formed by circular boundaries between topologically distinct photonic materials that naturally radiate vortices in the third dimension.