A review of multiple optical vortices generation: methods and applications

Optical vortices carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) have attracted increasing interest in recent years. Optical vortices have seen a variety of emerging applications in optical manipulation, optical trapping, optical tweezers, optical vortex knots, imaging, microscopy, sensing, metrology, quantum information processing, and optical communications. In various optical vortices enabled applications, the generation of multiple optical vortices is of great importance. In this review article, we focus on the methods of multiple optical vortices generation and its applications. We review the methods for generating multiple optical vortices in three cases, i.e., 1-to-N collinear OAM modes, 1-to-N OAM mode array and N-to-N collinear OAM modes. Diverse applications of multiple OAM modes in optical communications and non-communication areas are presented. Future trends, perspectives and opportunities are also discussed.