Arbitrary Multiplication and Division of the Orbital Angular Momentum of Light

Multiplication and division of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light are important functions in the exploitation of the OAM mode space for such purposes as high-dimensional quantum information encoding and mode division multiplexed optical communications. These operations are possible with optical transformations that reshape optical wave fronts according to azimuthal scaling. However, schemes proposed thus far have been limited to OAM multiplication by integer factors and require complex beam-copying or multitransformation diffraction stages; a result of the limited phase excursion 2 pi l around the annulus of an OAM state exp(il theta). Based on the key idea that the phase excursion along spirals in the transverse plane of a vortex is theoretically unlimited, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a simple yet effective scheme using an azimuth-scaling spiral transformation that can accomplish both OAM multiplication and division by arbitrary rational factors in a single stage.