Hermite-Gaussian mode sorter

TL;DR

This paper presents an efficient and robust Hermite-Gaussian mode sorter capable of sorting 16 modes, with potential applications in optical communications, microscopy, and quantum information processing.

Contribution

The authors propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel mode sorter for Hermite-Gaussian modes based on their relation to Laguerre-Gaussian modes, scalable to higher dimensions.

Findings

Successfully sorted 16 HG modes experimentally

Method is robust and easily extendable to more modes

Potential applications in communications and imaging

Abstract

The Hermite-Gaussian (HG) modes, sometimes also referred to as transverse electromagnetic modes in free space, form a complete and orthonormal basis that have been extensively used to describe optical fields. In addition, these modes have been shown to be helpful to enhance information capacity of optical communications as well as to achieve super-resolution imaging in microscopy. Here we propose and present the realization of an efficient, robust mode sorter that can sort a large number of HG modes based on the relation between HG modes and Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes. We experimentally demonstrate the sorting of 16 HG modes, and our method can be readily extended to a higher-dimensional state space in a straightforward manner. We expect that our demonstration will have direct applications in a variety of fields including fiber optics, classical and quantum communications, as well as super-resolution imaging.