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Recovering the vorticity of a light beam after scattering

Article  in  Applied Physics Letters · July 2015

DOI: 10.1063/1.4926913

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 Recovering the vorticity of a light beam after scattering
Gangi Reddy Salla, Chithrabhanu Perumangattu, Shashi Prabhakar, Ali Anwar, and Ravindra P. Singh

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 107, 021104 (2015); doi: 10.1063/1.4926913

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4926913
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/107/2?ver=pdfcov
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 107, 021104 (2015)

Recovering the vorticity of a light beam after scattering

Gangi Reddy Salla,1,a) Chithrabhanu Perumangattu,1 Shashi Prabhakar,1,2 Ali Anwar,1
and Ravindra P. Singh3
1
Physical Research Laboratory, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad -380009, India
2
IIT Gandhinagar, Chandkheda, Ahmedabad 382424, India
3
Physical Research Laboratory, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad 380009, India
(Received 28 April 2015; accepted 6 July 2015; published online 15 July 2015)
We generate optical vortices and scatter them through a rough surface. However, the scattered light
passing through a lens shows the same vorticity when probed at the Fourier plane. The vorticity is
measured using a nonseparable state of polarization and orbital angular momentum of light as it
cannot be confirmed by the standard interferometric technique. The observed vorticity is found to
be independent of the amount of scattered light collected. Therefore, vortices can be used as
information carriers even in the presence of scattering media. The experimental results are well
C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.
supported by the theoretical results. V
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4926913]

Optical vortices are the twisted light beams recognized
by their helical wave fronts due to azimuthal phase variation
around the point of darkness.1,2 They carry an orbital angular
momentum (OAM) of mh per photon where m is order of the
vortex defined as the number of twisted wave fronts over one
wave length.3–5 The spin angular momentum of light is
related to polarization that has two dimensional basis whereas
the OAM is related to the spatial mode and forms an infinite
dimensional basis. This kind of multi-dimensionality offers a
realization of d-dimensional qudits that increases the channel
capacity in quantum communication.6 In the case of classical
communication once again, the number of spatial modes
available has been utilized to enhance the data capacity in
fibers.7,8 They have also been used for free space communi-
cation.9,10 However, for communication, it is desirable to
encode the information in a variable whose value remains
unaffected by the scattering. Therefore, the effect of scatter-
ing on coherence for single-photon communication using or-
bital angular momentum states has been investigated
theoretically11 along with their propagation through a
Kolmogorov type atmospheric turbulence.12
Recently, the spatial and temporal coherence properties
of scattered optical vortices have been studied in detail.13–18
A study of vortex beam passing through an iris diaphragm
shows that the vorticity of light does not change even after
diffraction.19 It has been shown that the decay of temporal
correlation is sharper with the increase in order of the vorti-
ces after scattering through a ground glass plate (GGP).13,14
The formation of ring shaped beams in the scattered optical
vortices has also been reported and observed.15,20
In this letter, we show experimentally as well as theoreti-
cally that this ring shaped beam has same vorticity as the inci-
dent optical vortex.21 To confirm their vorticity, we use the
properties of non-separable state of light along with interfer-
ometry. The non-separable state of light for different degrees
of freedom or the non-quantum entanglement has already
been proposed and demonstrated.22,23 We consider the non-
a)
sgreddy@prl.res.in
separability of polarization and OAM in a light beam that can
be created by the superposition of two vortices having oppo-
site topological charges but orthogonal polarizations.23
We start our experiments with the scattering of a vortex
beam and vortex-vortex interferometry for both the coherent
and the collimated scattered optical vortex beams in a Mach-
Zehnder interferometer. First, we scatter a vortex beam em-
bedded in a host Gaussian beam of width w0 ¼ 1.92 mm
through a GGP and collimate the scattered light using a lens
combination as shown in Fig. 1. Figure 2 shows the intensity
distributions of a scattered optical vortex of order 2 at differ-
ent positions from the scattering plane, i.e., after the GGP,
immediately after the lens placed at a distance from the GGP,
and at the Fourier plane, respectively, for zero and non-zero
speeds of the GGP. It can be seen that there is no trace of the
vortex beam after the GGP as well as immediately after the
lens as the phase of the beam gets completely randomized.
The speckles got averaged out at the non-zero speed of the
GGP and give flat intensity distribution. However, when
probed at the Fourier plane, we see a ring shaped beam.
The collimated scattered beam interferes with itself and
produces a fringe pattern when phases are matched from
speckle to speckle. Then, the GGP is removed to observe the
fringes for a coherent vortex beam. The corresponding inter-
ference fringes for both, coherent and scattered vortex beams
have been shown in Fig. 3 for the orders of 0–3. One needs
to match every speckle with its copy present in another arm
of the interferometer to get the macroscopic fringes with
scattered light. It is clear from the figure that there is a vast
similarity in interferograms of coherent and scattered light
beams. In both the cases, the number of fringes with discon-
tinuity is equal to the order of the vortex. However, one can-
not confirm the vorticity with these results as the fringe
separation and shape change rapidly with a small spatial shift
between the two beams of the interferometer. In the case of
coherent beam, the fringe pattern changes to oppositely ori-
ented fork fringes, a characteristic of vortex-vortex interfer-
ometry while for the collimated scattered light it completely
disappears due to mismatch from speckle to speckle.

0003-6951/2015/107(2)/021104/5/$30.00 107, 021104-1 C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC

V

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 021104-2 Salla et al.
Therefore, we look for an alternative method that uses the
properties of a non-separable state of polarization and OAM
to find the azimuthal phase structure in the scattered optical
vortices.
Before we go for the experimental results, let us
describe briefly the non-separable state of light. A classical
light beam with a non-separable state of polarization and
OAM22,23 can be represented as
Eðx; yÞ ¼ e^x LGm ^y LGm
0 ðx; yÞ þ e 0 ðx; yÞ;
where e^x and e^y are horizontal and vertical polarization states
of light. LG6m
0 ðx; yÞ, Laguerre-Gaussian modes with azi-
muthal index m and radial index 0 correspond to the field dis-
tributions of two equal and oppositely charged optical
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 021104 (2015)
FIG. 1. The experimental set up for
scattering the vortex beam and to
observe the vortex-vortex interference
fringes. M1–M4—Mirrors, VL—Vortex
lens used to convert the Gaussian to vor-
tex beam, BS—Beam splitter, L1 and
L2—Plano-convex lenses, and GGP—
Ground glass plate.
FIG. 2. The intensity distributions of a
scattered optical vortex of order 2 after
the GGP (left), immediately after the
lens (middle) and the Fourier plane
(right) correspond to different speeds
of the GGP (top) 0 cm/s (bottom)
97.35 rad/s.
FIG. 3. Experimentally obtained inter-
ference fringes for both coherent (top)
and scattered (bottom) optical vortex
beams of order m ¼ 0–3 (from left to
right).
vortices. These LG modes, which are OAM states of light can
be represented on a OAM Poincare sphere.24,25 All points on
this Poincare sphere can be realized by projecting the above
non-separable beam to corresponding polarizations. The pro-
jection to horizontal (vertical) polarization gives an optical
vortex of order m (m) while to diagonal and anti-diagonal
polarizations will give the superposition of two vortices with
the same order but opposite in sign, and can be written as
(1) e x þ e^y ÞðLGm
ED ðx; yÞ ¼ ð^ m
0 ðx; yÞ þ LG0 ðx; yÞÞ; (2)
m
e x  e^y ÞðLGm
EA ðx; yÞ ¼ ð^ 0 ðx; yÞ  LG0 ðx; yÞÞ: (3)
This superposition of states contains the characteristic
of azimuthal phase in their intensity distribution with 2 m
 021104-3 Salla et al.
number of petals for the vortex of order m. We follow the
same logic in our experiment. We scatter a non-separable
state through the GGP and collect part of the light with a
plano-convex lens. We get two speckle patterns correspond-
ing to two vortices having orthogonal polarizations which
generate dark cores in the Fourier plane. If these partially
coherent beams with dark core have azimuthal phase, their
superposition must give the petals. These petals help us in
measuring the order of scattered vortex that is half of the
number of petals. The theoretical intensity distributions cor-
responding to the different polarizations of a non-separable
state have been given in Fig. 4. The experimental set up and
the corresponding results have been explained below.
Our experimental setup for the observation of vorticity
in scattered optical vortices is shown in Fig. 5. We have used
a diode pumped solid state laser (Verdi 10) of wavelength
532 nm. The light beam passes through a half wave plate
whose fast axis is oriented at 22.5 that converts the polariza-
tion from vertical to diagonal. Then it passes through a modi-
fied polarizing Sagnac interferometer26 containing vortex
lens of order m ¼ 1, 2, and 3. The beam coming out of the in-
terferometer is a non-separable state of the polarization and
the spatial mode or the OAM. This kind of non-separability
is also called non-quantum hybrid entanglement.22,23 The
obtained non-separable state is the superposition of two vor-
tices, whose orders are same in magnitude and opposite in
sign with polarizations orthogonal to each other (Eq. (1)).
FIG. 5. The experimental set up for observing the vorticity in scattered opti-
cal vortex. M1–M4—Mirrors, HWP—Half wave plate, PBS—Polarizing
beam splitter, VL—Vortex lens, i/p state—Non–separable state, GGP—
Ground glass plate, P—Polarizer, and L—Plano convex lens.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 021104 (2015)
FIG. 4. The theoretical intensity distri-
butions of a nonseparable state of
polarization and OAM for the different
projections—Horizontal (column1),
vertical (column2), anti–diagonal (col-
umn3), and diagonal (column4) of
m ¼ 2 (top), 3 (bottom).
This beam is scattered through a ground glass plate rotating
at a constant speed of 97.35 rad/s. The constant rotation of
GGP helps in averaging out the speckles and reduces the
noise while imaging them.27,28 The scattered light consists of
two orthogonally polarized speckle patterns corresponding to
the two oppositely charged vortices. It is focused with a
plano-convex lens (L) of focal length 20 cm. Before record-
ing the far field intensity distributions with a CCD camera,
we have used a polarizer P to project the output state in dif-
ferent polarizations. The lens is placed at a distance of 22 cm
from the GGP, and the position of the camera has been
adjusted to get the geometrical focus. One should note that
the geometrical focus of the lens shifts towards the lens with
decrease in the amount of light collected.15,29 We have col-
lected the scattered light with a lens of aperture 2.5 cm to
observe the intensity distribution at the Fourier plane.
Figure 6 shows the experimentally observed far field
intensity distributions of the projections in different polariza-
tions for a light beam obtained by the scattering of a non-
separable beam with vortices of orders 2 (top) and 3 (bottom).
Since the two orthogonally polarized speckle patterns never
interfere, the far field intensity distribution of the scattered
non-separable beam is similar to an optical vortex beam. If we
project on horizontal (vertical) polarization, it looks like a vor-
tex beam of order m(m) (first and second columns). While
projection to any arbitrary polarization results into conversion
of two orthogonal polarization states to non-orthogonal and
the two vortices start interfering with each other, this interfer-
ence gives the petal structures in the far field intensity distri-
butions (third and fourth columns). The petal structures are
very clear and look similar to the theoretical intensity distribu-
tions for coherent beams shown in Fig. 4. These petals con-
firm the presence of azimuthal phase in the scattered beam.
For theoretical analysis, we start with the electric field
of an optical vortex of azimuthal index m embedded in a
host Gaussian beam of width w0
2 þy2
x
w2
Eðx; yÞ ¼ ðx þ iyÞm e 0 : (4)
The ground glass plate introduces a d-correlated
Gaussian random function to the beam passing through it.
This can be achieved numerically by taking the convolution
between a 2D spatial random function Rand(x, y) and a
Gaussian correlation function C(x, y)27,28
 021104-4 Salla et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 021104 (2015)

FIG. 6. Experimentally obtained far

field intensity distributions for differ-
ent projections in polarization after
scattering through a ground glass plate.
These results correspond to the non-
separable states with m ¼ 2 (top), 3
(bottom) for w0 ¼ 1.92 mm.

/ðx; yÞ ¼ Cðx; yÞ  Randðx; yÞ; (5) E0 ðx; yÞ ¼ Eðx; yÞei/ðx;yÞ ; (7)

where * represents the 2D convolution between the two
functions. The Gaussian correlation function is defined as
2
þðy1 y2 Þ2 =r2 Þ
Cðx; yÞ ¼ eððx1 x2 Þ
where r is the correlation width. Now, the electric field of an
optical vortex after scattering through a GGP plate is given
by30
where /ðx; yÞ is random phase introduced by the GGP to the
vortex. The results have been simulated using this random
phase distribution.
; (6) Figure 7 shows the far field intensity distributions for
the superposition of two scattered equal and oppositely
charged vortices with m ¼ 2 and 3 corresponding to the pro-
jections on different polarization states. The constant rotation
of the GGP has been taken into account by the incoherent

FIG. 7. The theoretical far field inten-

sity distributions that correspond to the
images shown in Fig. 6.

FIG. 8. The experimental (top) and

simulated (bottom) far field intensity
distributions for the projection on diag-
onal polarization of a scattered non-
separable light beam of m ¼ 2 at differ-
ent speeds of the GGP given at top of
the figure.

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 021104-5 Salla et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 021104 (2015)

1
addition over 100 frames. The results are in good agreement
with the experimental results shown in Fig. 6. We have used 2
the non-separable beam of polarization and OAM in order to
3
make superposition of two scattered vortices in our experi-
4
ment. These results confirm our experimental results of vor-
5
ticity present in the scattered vortex beams.
We also study the effect of speed of rotating GGP on the 6
recovered vorticity. The corresponding results have been
7
shown in Fig. 8 along with the simulated intensity distribu-
tions. The speckles get disappear with the increase in speed of 8
the GGP due to the averaging of speckles. For the averaging
9
to occur, one should consider the exposure time of CCD cam-
era used for the imaging that should be much greater than the 10
time required for the GGP to complete one rotation (trot). The
11
number of frames over which the incoherent addition should
12
be done for a given exposure time (texpo) of the CCD camera
13
is given by N ¼ texpo/trot. It can be seen from the non-varying 14
intensity distributions in a given plane with the speed.
15
We also observe that the topological charge of scattered
light is independent of the amount of scattered light collected
16
by the lens. Thus the topological charge or vorticity can
serve as a better information carrier due to its robust nature 17
against the scattering. One can also make a number of copies
18
by collecting different parts of the scattered light. This may
also increase the use of topological charge in public commu- 19
20
nication systems.
21
In conclusion, we have experimentally demonstrated the
22
recovery of vorticity present in the scattered vortices using
the properties of a non-separable state of light. The experi- 23
24
mental results have been verified with the theoretical analy- 25
sis by taking into account random phase introduced by the
26
GGP. These results may boost the application of the optical
vortex beams as information carriers. 27
28
The authors wish to acknowledge Dr. Rakesh Kumar 29
Singh from IIST, Thiruvananthapuram and Dr. Ashok Kumar 30
from University of Sao Paulo, Brazil for useful discussions.
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