OAM Measurement with Freeform Optical Elements

Capacity for ever larger amounts of information is consistently sought after for optical communications and data transfer. One approach is to employ optical beams with orbital angular momentum (OAM), which can be generated, for instance, with spiral phase plates. Counterpart to its generation, the measurement of OAM, i.e., the decoding of the information, is of equal importance. Following the concept of M. P. J. Lavery et al., we demonstrate how to measure OAM with the help of two customized freeform optical elements in VirtualLab Fusion.