Massive individual orbital angular momentum channels for multiplexing enabled by Dammann gratings

Data transmission rates in optical communication systems are approaching the limits of conventional multiplexing methods. Orbital angular momentum (OAM) in optical vortex beams offers a new degree of freedom and the potential to increase the capacity of free-space optical communication systems, with OAM beams acting as information carriers for OAM division multiplexing (OAM-DM). We demonstrate independent collinear OAM channel generation, transmission and simultaneous detection using Dammann optical vortex gratings (DOVGs). We achieve 80/160 Tbit s−1 capacity with uniform power distributions along all channels, with 1600 individually modulated quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK)/16-QAM data channels…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 61001101, 61427819, 61435006, 61138003, 61036013
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China

  Award: 2015CB352004