Revolution of chiral materials science using optical vortex fields

Abstract

Optical vortex, possessing orbital angular momentum owing to its helical wavefront, enables the ‘twist’ of a variety of materials to fabricate exotic chiral materials, such as chiral needles, chiral surface reliefs, and helical microfibers, which manifest the helical wavefront of the irradiated optical vortex. Such light-matter interaction upon the irradiation of optical vortex will potentially provide us novel fundamental material sciences, such as spin-orbital angular momentum coupling, and advanced photonic technologies, including space-domain-multiplexing-communication devices.