Approaching the Fundamental Limit of Orbital Angular Momentum Multiplexing Through a Hologram Metasurface

TL;DR

This paper establishes the fundamental limit of orbital angular momentum multiplexing using a hologram metasurface, providing theoretical bounds and experimental validation for optimizing OAM-based communication systems.

Contribution

It introduces a universal limit for spatial mode multiplexing via planar electromagnetic devices and demonstrates a metasurface hologram approach to approach this limit.

Findings

The fundamental limit is characterized by independent scattering channels.

A metasurface hologram can transform OAM modes to separated plane-wave modes.

Optimization suppresses spectral aliasing, achieving near-limit performance.

Abstract

Establishing and approaching the fundamental limit of orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing are necessary and increasingly urgent for current multiple-input multiple-output research. In this work, we elaborate the fundamental limit in terms of independent scattering channels (or degrees of freedom of scattered fields) through angular-spectral analysis, in conjunction with a rigorous Green function method. The scattering channel limit is universal for arbitrary spatial mode multiplexing, which is launched by a planar electromagnetic device, such as antenna, metasurface, etc, with a predefined physical size. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally the limit by a metasurface hologram that transforms orthogonal OAM modes to plane-wave modes scattered at critically separated angular-spectral regions. Particularly, a minimax optimization algorithm is applied to suppress angular spectrum aliasing, achieving good performances in both full-wave simulation and experimental measurement at microwave frequencies. This work offers a theoretical upper bound and corresponding approach route for engineering designs of OAM multiplexing.