Tunable structured laser over full spatial spectrum
Modern tunable lasers are indispensable instruments in fundamental science and optical frequency applications. With the growing interest in structured light, there's a need for tunable structured lasers with high transverse electromagnetic (TEM) modal purity across a broad spatial spectrum, but no commercial solutions exist. Here, we present the first tunable structured laser that can emit all possible single TEM modes with extremely high purity over a wide range. This is achieved by the collaborative use of intracavity pump geometry and astigmatic detuning to selectively gain a desired mode while blockading others. Our astigmatic oscillator can tunably generate any TEM mode within the spatial bandwidth, achieving over 40,000 orthogonal Hermite-Gauss modes in the experiment, and each can be further expanded into numerous Hermite-Laguerre-Gauss modes via unitary transformation. This approach does not require extra intracavity beam shaping components, offering a promising design for commercially available structured lasers with full spatial spectrum tunability.
Authors
- Helen M. Pask (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4578-8439)
- Jingni Geng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7262-488X)
- A.S. Rao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8199-6505)
- Zhi-Wei Lv (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9433-7450)
- Tianchang Liu
- David James Spence
- Wei Shi
- Shi-Jie Fu
- Carmelo Rosales-Guzmán
- Quan Sheng
- Zhen-Xu Bai
- Jia-Qi Jiang
- Takashige Omatsu
- Zhi-Han Zhu
- Jian-Quan Yao
Institutions
- Harbin University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Yanbian University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Harbin Engineering University (CN)
- Chiba University (JP)
- Tianjin University (CN)
- Hebei University of Technology (CN)
- Centro de Investigaciones en Optica (MX)
- Macquarie University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Light Science & Applications
- Published
- 2026-03-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-026-02243-3
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 31.39
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China