Spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals materials for optical vortex generation

Jaegang Jo; Sujeong Byun; Munseong Bae; Jianwei Wang; Haejun Chung; Sejeong Kim

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01926-7

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Spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals materials for optical vortex generation

Original Articles

- Spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals materials for optical vortex generation
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 10, Pages: 2971-2979(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Department of Electronic Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  2.Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
  3.State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China
- Author bio：
  
  Haejun Chung (haejun@hanyang.ac.kr)
  Sejeong Kim (sejeong.kim@unimelb.edu.au)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01926-7
  CLC：
- Received：22 December 2024，
  
  Revised：2025-06-06，
  
  Accepted：20 June 2025，
  
  Published Online：18 August 2025，
  
  Published：31 October 2025
- Accepted：
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Jo, J. et al. Spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals materials for optical vortex generation. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2971-2979 (2025).
DOI：

Jo, J. et al. Spin-orbit coupling in van der Waals materials for optical vortex generation. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2971-2979 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01926-7.

摘要

Abstract

An optical vortex beam has attracted significant attention across diverse applications

including optical manipulation

phase-contrast microscopy

optical communication

and quantum photonics. To utilize vortex generators for integrated photonics

researchers have developed ultra-compact vortex generators using fork gratings

metasurfaces

and integrated microcombs. However

those devices depend on costly

time-consuming nanofabrication and are constrained by the low signal-to-noise ratio due to the fabrication error. As an alternative maneuver

spin-orbit coupling has

emerged as a method to obtain the vortex beam by converting spin angular momentum (SAM) without nanostructures. Here

we demonstrate the creation of an optical vortex beam using van der Waals (vdW) materials. The significantly high birefringence of vdW materials allows the generation of optical vortex beams

even with materials of sub-wavelength thickness. In this work

we utilize an 8 µm-thick hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystal for the creation of optical vortices carrying topological charges of ±2. We also present the generation of an optical vortex beam in a 320 nm-thick MoS

crystal with a conversion efficiency of 0.09. This study paves the way for fabrication-less and ultra-compact optical vortex generators

which can be applied for integrated photonics and large-scale vortex generator arrays.

关键词

Keywords

references

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