Experiments done so far ...

What experiments have been done so far in twisted light - semiconductor interaction? Here I put together a list of the published experiments.

From https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scenario/labman3/thinlens.htm

To help researchers and students interested or already working in the topic to be better informed of the progress we are all doing, I compiled a list of the experiments that have been already published on solid state physics-- with one exception, see *. Some of you may think this is a short list, but be patient; soon there will be more experiments published by new groups!

Please, let me know if I forget to list any, and I will correct it. In alphabetic order:

Clayburn et al. 

Study of electron photo-emission, exciting bulk GaAs with twisted light with different topological charge. Their results show that electrons emitted from the sample do not become polarized, meaning that there seem to be no transfer from orbital angular momentum to spin angular momentum of electrons. For more information see the post here.

Reference: N. B. Clayburn, J. L. McCarter, J. M. Dreiling, M. Poelker, D. M. Ryan, and T. J. Gay, "Search for spin-polarized photoemission from GaAs using light with orbital angular momentum" Phys. Rev. B 87, 035204 (2013).

Noyan  et al.

Four-wave mixing experiment on bulk GaAs. The technique exploits the dechroism induced in the semiconductor by a pump with orbital angular momentum, which by acting on the delayed probe beam can be measured. The experiments allowed to determine the decay of the orbital angular momentum signal, which happens to live longer than expected. See also the experiments by Shigematsu. 

Reference: Mehmet A. Noyan and James M. Kikkawa, "Time-resolved orbital angular momentum spectroscopy" Applied Physics Letters 107, 032406 (2015).

Persuy et al.

Four-wave mixing experiment on CdTe/CdZnTe quantum well. The authors present theory and experiment showing that the generated beam carries the correct amount of orbital angular momentum.

Reference: Déborah Persuy, Marc Ziegler, Olivier Crégut, Kuntheak Kheng, Mathieu Gallart, Bernd Hönerlage, and Pierre Gilliot, "Four-wave mixing in quantum wells using femtosecond pulses with Laguerre-Gauss modes", Phys. Rev. B 92, 115312 (2015).

*Schmiegelow et al. 

A Ca ion inside a trap is excited by twisted light, and the transition between S and D states, Zeeman split by a static magnetic field, is studied. From measurements of the Rabi frequency, the transition matrix element is deduced and compare to theoretical predictions. The authors find a good match between experiments and theory, thereby demonstrating that twisted light can induce transitions in small systems. 

Reference: Christian T. Schmiegelow, Jonas Schulz, Henning Kaufmann, Thomas Ruster, Ulrich G. Poschinger & Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler, "Transfer of optical orbital angular momentum to a bound electron" Nature Communications 7, 12998 (2016).

Seghilani et al.

The fabrication and characterization of a new laser device that generates twisted light is reported. The system is based on semiconductor technology, being the active medium a stack of quantum wells optically pumped. The system produces twisted light thanks to a dielectric metasurface that favors a particular topological charge of the light field. No extra out-of-cavity optics needed. 

Reference: Mohamed S. Seghilani, Mikhael Myara, Mohamed Sellahi, Luc Legratiet, Isabelle Sagnes, Grégoire Beaudoin, Philippe Lalanne & Arnaud Garnache, "Vortex Laser based on III-V semiconductor metasurface: direct generation of coherent Laguerre-Gauss modes carrying controlled orbital angular momentum" Scientific Reports 6, 38156 (2016).

Shigematsu et al.

This four-wave mixing experiment relates to the earlier one by Ueno (see below), conducted by the same group in Japan. The article provides additional insight into the theoretical model, and a detailed experiment. Moreover, a study of the decay of the orbital angular momentum signal is performed. See also the experiments by Noyan.

Reference: K. Shigematsu, K. Yamane, R. Morita, and Y. Toda "Coherent dynamics of exciton orbital angular momentum transferred by optical vortex pulses", Phys. Rev. B 93, 045205 (2016).

Ueno et al.

Four-wave mixing experiment on GaN studying the transfer of orbital angular momentum to the center-of-mass of excitons. The authors present a theoretical model that allows to identify the linear and angular momentum of the generated FWM signal. The theoretical model is verified by the experiments. See also the experiment by Shigematsu.

Reference: Ueno Y1, Toda Y, Adachi S, Morita R, Tawara T. "Coherent transfer of orbital angular momentum to excitons by optical four-wave mixing." Opt Express,17 (22):20567-74 (2009).

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*The reason I'm listing this experiment on twisted light-ion interaction is mainly because it is, in my opinion, relevant to studies of quantum dot, a topic that I have already covered in the blog.