Generation and Detection of Structured Light: A Review

Structured light beams have rapidly advanced over the past few years, from specific spatial-transverse/longitudinal structure to tailored spatiotemporal structure. Such beams with diverse spatial structures or spatiotemporal structures have brought various breakthroughs to many fields, including optical communications, optical sensing, micromanipulation, quantum information processing, and super-resolution imaging. Thus, plenty of methods have been proposed, and lots of devices have been manufactured to generate structured light beams by tailoring the structures of beams in the space domain and the space-time domain. In this paper, we firstly give a brief introduction of different types of structured light. Then, we review the recent research progress in the generation and detection of structured light on different platforms, such as free space, optical fiber, and integrated devices. Finally, challenges and perspectives are also discussed.

Automated summary

Structured light beams have evolved rapidly in recent years, from specific spatial structures to tailored spatiotemporal structures, bringing numerous breakthroughs to fields like optical communications and quantum information processing. Various methods and devices have been proposed to generate structured light beams, with research and detection conducted on different platforms.