Orbital Angular Momentum Data Transmission Using a Silicon Photonic Mode Multiplexer

We designed and fabricated a silicon photonic orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexer (MUX) chip that enables simultaneous wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) and OAM mode-division multiplexing (MDM) in optical fiber communication systems. We successfully utilized the fabricated MUX chip to demonstrate simultaneous 3 OAM MDM transmission as well as OAM MDM/WDM transmission with an 800-m OAM ring-core fiber. In both cases, 10 Gbit/s OOK signals were utilized and BERs below the 7% FEC limit were obtained.