Self-healing of structured light: a review

TL;DR

This review comprehensively discusses the history, mechanisms, and significance of self-healing in structured light, especially vector vortex beams, highlighting its physical principles, current challenges, and future prospects.

Contribution

It provides a unified framework for understanding self-healing effects in various complex structured light fields, enhancing conceptual clarity and guiding future research.

Findings

Historical development of self-healing effects

Unified taxonomy of self-healing in structured light

Identification of open challenges and future directions

Abstract

Self-healing of light refers to the ability of a light field to recover its structure after being damaged by a partial obstruction placed in its propagation path. Here, we will give a comprehensive review of the history and development of self-healing effects, especially highlighting its importance in vector vortex beams carrying spin and orbital angular momenta. Moreover, an unified zoology of self-healing, structured light is proposed to unveil a deeper understanding of its physical mechanism and provide a bird's eye view on diverse forms of self-healing effects of different kinds of complex structured light. Finally, we outline the open challenges we are facing, potential opportunities and future trends for both fundamental physics and applications.