In the 1990s, the realization that helical beams carry orbital angular momentum started the field of structured light. In 2024, experiments showed that these beams preserve their phase information when traversing a turbid medium, which promises new applications in biophotonics.
Key advances
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Light carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) maintains its phase structure through scattering, enabling coherent signal retrieval at depths where conventional beams lose phase integrity, despite similar penetration limits
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The persistence of phase information in speckle patterns generated by OAM light suggests a bridge between quantum and classical optics, indicating that discrete quantum OAM states can partially survive multiple scattering events
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Light carrying OAM has shown extreme sensitivity to refractive index variations as small as 10−6
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The author thanks I. Meglinski for useful discussions.
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Novikova, T. Preserving orbital angular momentum in scattering media. Nat Rev Phys 7, 470–472 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00864-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00864-y
