Generation of coupled orbital angular momentum modes from an optical vortex parametric laser source

We report on the generation of flower (wheel) modes, which manifest coupled orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes, from a vortex pumped optical parametric oscillator simply by employing a pump source with a short temporal coherence time. This vortex oscillator was also developed to generate a further higher-order vortex signal output with ℓs=2-4 by replacement of the pump source with a longer coherence time. The signal and idler outputs were tuned within wavelength ranges of 745-955 nm and 1200-1855 nm, respectively. The maximum signal output energy of 1.2 mJ was measured with an optical efficiency of 15.6%.