Low-noise III-V metasurface based semiconductor vortex laser and rotational Doppler velocimetry

We demonstrate a surface-emitting laser, based on III-V semiconductor technology with an integrated metasurface, generating vortex-like coherent state in the Laguerre-Gauss basis.24 We use a first order phase perturbation to introduce a weak orbital anisotropy, based on a dielectric metasurface and non-linear laser dynamics, allowing selecting vortex handedness. Moreover, similarly to linear Doppler Shift, light carrying orbital angular momentum L, scattered by a rotating object at angular velocity, experiences a rotational Doppler shift L. We show that this fundamental light matter interaction can be detected exploiting self-mixing in a vortex laser under Doppler-shifted optical feedback, with quantum noise-limited light detection.25 This will allow us to combine a velocity sensor with optical tweezers for micro-manipulation applications, with high performances, simplicity and compactness. Such high performance laser opens the path to widespread new photonic applications.

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