Micro-Ring Resonator-Based Tunable Vortex Beam Emitter

Light beams bearing orbital angular momentum (OAM) are used in various scientific and engineering applications, such as microscopy, laser material processing, and optical tweezers. Precise topological charge control is crucial for efficiently using vortex beams in different fields, such as information encoding in optical communications and sensor systems. This work presents a novel method for optimizing an emitting micro-ring resonator (MRR) for emitting vortex beams with variable orders of OAM. The MRR consists of a ring waveguide with periodic structures side-coupled to a bus waveguide. The resonator is tunable due to the phase change material Sb₂Se₃ deposited on the ring. This material can change from amorphous to crystalline while changing its refractive index. In the amorphous phase, it is 3.285 + 0i, while in the transition to the crystalline phase, it reaches 4.050 + 0i at emission wavelength 1550 nm. We used this property to control the vortex beam topological charge. In our study, we optimized the distance between the bus waveguide and the ring waveguide, the bending angle, and the width of the bus waveguide. The optimality criterion was chosen to maximize the flux density of the radiated energy emitted by the resonator. The numerical simulation results proved our method. The proposed approach can be used to optimize optical beam emitters carrying OAM for various applications.