LAUSR

This paper presents a scheme exploiting a uniform circular frequency diverse array (UC-FDA) of optical beamlets to realize non-diffracting beams with unprecedented switching rates in orbital angular momentum (OAM). The frequency diversity property of the system is a result of using an acousto-optic deflector (AOD) to generate an array on a circle which tags each beamlet with different frequencies. The non-diffracting nature of the generated beams is examined along with the generation of arbitrary time-dependent non-diffracting amplitude structures using the local phase control inherent in the system architecture. The resulting system can dynamically change the OAM at a rate of 20 ns per integer with maximum range of m = ±64 over 2.56 µs.