Abstract

Photons propagating in Laguerre–Gaussian modes have characteristic orbital angular momenta, which are fundamental optical degrees of freedom. The orbital angular momentum of light has potential application in high-capacity optical communication and even in quantum information processing. In this work, we experimentally construct a ring cavity with four lenses and four mirrors that is completely degenerate for Laguerre–Gaussian modes. By measuring the transmitted peaks and patterns of different modes, the ring cavity is shown to support more than 31 Laguerre–Gaussian modes. The constructed degenerate cavity opens a new way for using the unlimited resource of available angular momentum states simultaneously.

© 2017 Optical Society of America

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