Design of a programmable spiral phase mirror

TL;DR

This paper presents a programmable metallic mirror capable of dynamically shaping optical beams, including generating optical vortices with tunable topological charge and complex field profiles for advanced spatial encoding.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel metallic programmable mirror with independently actuated steps for dynamic beam shaping and vortex generation at optical wavelengths.

Findings

Successfully imprinted optical vortices with tunable topological charge.

Generated arbitrary field profiles for spatial encoding.

Demonstrated versatile beam shaping capabilities.

Abstract

We designed a metallic programmable mirror for optical wavelengths made up of a large number of discrete steps which can be moved independently by actuators. The device is able to easily reshape an incident beam, imprinting on it an optical vortex with tunable topological charge and orbital angular momentum (OAM). Furthermore it is possible to generate almost arbitrary field profiles which can be used for spatial encoding.