Large-scale integrated reconfigurable orbital angular momentum mode multiplexer

Abstract: Recent experiments in orbital angular momentum multiplexing have demonstrated its potential for improving the link capacity in optical interconnection networks. Meanwhile, compact photonic integrated orbital angular momentum (de-)multiplexing devices are needed to address requirements such as high scalability, fast configurability, low cost and low power consumption. Here we report on a large-scale integrated tunable orbital angular momentum mode multiplexer, which supports up to 20 multiplexed orbital angular momentum modes over 16 wavelength channels with 30 GHz channel spacing. A testbed of nine multiplexed OAM beams encoded with 28 Gbaud 16-quadrature amplitude modulation signal is demonstrated, achieving a 1.008 Tbit s-1 aggregated rate with low penalty and sub-microsecond reconfiguration rate of the orbital angular momentum mode. This device offers an effective solution for replacing bulky diffractive optical elements, paving the way for orbital angular momentum multiplexing in optical interconnection networks.