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.

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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

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article

Tunable structured laser over full spatial spectrum

Helen M. Pask, Jingni Geng, A.S. Rao, Zhi-Wei Lv et al.
1 citations
Light Science & Applications
Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
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article

Tunable structured laser over full spatial spectrum

Helen M. Pask, Jingni Geng, A.S. Rao, Zhi-Wei Lv, 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
article en
1 citations

Abstract

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.

Light Science & ApplicationsVol. 15(1)
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)
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 1%
Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
31.39
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