Controlled generation of picosecond-pulsed higher-order Poincaré sphere beams from an ytterbium-doped multicore fiber amplifier
Kunhao Ji, Di Lin, Ian Davidson, Siyi Wang, Joel Carpenter, Yoshimichi Amma, Yongmin Jung, Massimiliano Guasoni, David J. Richardson
Abstract
Higher-order Poincaré sphere (HOPS) beams with spatially variable polarization and phase distributions are opening up a host of unique applications in areas ranging from optical communication to microscopy. However, the flexible generation of these beams with high peak power from compact laser systems remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate the controlled generation of HOPS beams based on coherent beam combination from an Yb-doped multicore fiber (MCF) amplifier. Using a spatial light modulator to adaptively adjust the wavefront and polarization of the signals seeded into the individual cores of the MCF various structured beams (including cylindrical vector beams and first- and second-order vortex beams) were generated with peak powers up to 14 kW for <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m1"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>92</mml:mn> <mml:mtext> </mml:mtext> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">ps</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> pulses.