Arbitrary polarization and orbital angular momentum generation based on spontaneously broken degeneracy in helically twisted ring-core photonic crystal fibers

Using orbital angular momentum (OAM) as a spatial information channel attracts a lot of attention due to its infinite multiplexing capability. The research on OAM carrying fibers is intensively studied and ring-core fibers are promising candidates for them. At the same time, generating OAM modes in those fibers are also important topic. Here, the evolutions of polarization states including OAM of light in helically twisted ring-core photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) are investigated for generating OAM states. The degeneracy of some of the mode sets is spontaneously broken, and the birefringence cause a geometric phase (GP) in the twisted PCFs while preserving the vectorial nature of the modes. It is demonstrated that an arbitrary polarization and OAM state can be generated by using the GP in uniformly twisted and twisted PCFs with periodical inversion. In the ring-core PCF presented in this paper, the degeneracy of HE 31 and EH 31 mode sets are broken, and OAM light with the topological charge of 2 and 4 can be generated. The wavelength dependence is very small compared with that of OAM generators based on long-period gratings (LPGs). Furthermore, by properly setting the period of the inversion, OAM light with different topological charges can be simultaneously generated with the same fiber structure. These results indicate that the proposed approach is effective for the generation of OAM modes with the conventional fiber modes.