On-chip orbital angular momentum modes generator and (de)multiplexer based on trench silicon waveguides

Based on an integrated silicon platform, we present an ultracompact structure to generate optical orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes, where only a waveguide with a specially designed trench is involved. Single-trench waveguide can support two orthogonal LP-like modes whose optical axes are rotated by around 45° with respect to the horizontal and vertical directions. By optimizing the structure parameters, OAM modes with topological charges of + 1 and -1 can be selectively generated by combining two orthogonal LP-like modes with different propagation constants. We study the structure parameters for both x- and y-polarizations over a wide wavelength range from 1.45 µm to 1.65 µm. The average mode purities are close to 90% for x- and y-polarizations. Moreover, we design an on-chip OAM modes (de)multiplexer (OAM₀, OAM _{± 1}) for x-polarization based on trench silicon waveguides. It is shown that the mode extinction ratio can achieve approximately 20 dB from 1.52 µm to 1.58 µm.