Robust laser beam engineering using polarization and angular momentum diversity

“We describe a laser beam engineered to carry l = 0 and l = 1 orbital angular momentum (OAM) states in orthogonal polarizations. It is observed that on collinear transmission through a random phase screen, the far field diffraction intensity patterns for the individual polarization states are complementary with significant negative correlation. As a result the combined intensity profile for the beam remains robust against time varying phase fluctuations. In our simulation and experiment the SNR for the central lobe of the combined far-field diffraction pattern defined as mean divided by the standard deviation of intensity values shows significant improvement over that for individual polarizations. The concept of polarization and OAM diversity as demonstrated here can be considered valuable for robust laser beam engineering without the requirement of any active real-time correction methods.”