| Twisted light, or rather orbital angular momentum (OAM) carrying beams or photons, has gained enormous progress and has been gradually becoming the hottest topic of the optical community over the past decade. In this booming subfield of modern optics, OAM plays a crucial role. Particularly, the infinite dimensional Hilbert space spanned OAM degree-of-freedom has directly given rise to a promising research direction—informatics, ranging from high-capacity optical communications, high-precise optical metrology, and high-dimension quantum information. In addition, the unique phase and intensity distributions of twisted light enable one to shape focal property, and thus inspire another fascinating research direction—tailorable lighter-matter interface, ranging from, imaging,microscopy, and optical manipulation at the nanoscale. In a word, OAM inspired new fundamental questions and frontier issues, and thus it can serve as a near-perfect test case for the study of the quantum-classical boundary. In this context,we focus on the fundamental question in quantum theory and frontier issue in light-field manipulation, theoretically and experimentally study the theoretical mechanism and application basis. By exploring the influence of OAM degree-of-freedom on the space-time feature of light field and nonlinear photon-phonon coupling, addressing the long-standing issue of whether wavefunction represents physical reality, and breakthrough the frontier issue of high-dimension nonlinear light-matter interface for information processing. The main content of this thesis includes:(1) We present a universal theory for accurately describing the evolution of wavefunction of twisted light. The whole diffractive propagation history of Gaussian light in a typical OAM-manipulation loop is demonstrated. Based on the theory, the accurate dynamical evolution of twisted photons since being generated in wave-vector space is demonstrated, and corresponding accurately subluminal feature is presented for the first time.(2) We present the proposal of quantum twisted double slits experiment, the subluminal feature of twisted photons is observed for the first time, where the nonlocal physical reality of wavefunctions is verified, and the role of measurements in dynamics is revealed, i.e.,breaking the time-reversal symmetry and defining the direction of time-arrow.(3) The nonlinear propagation of twisted light in stimulated Brillouin amplification media is systematically studied. The generation of intense structured light field via Brillouin beam combining is demonstrated for the first time, besides, this results indicate that the structured acoustic field can be generated and manipulated via photon-phonon coupling.(4) The nonlinear evolution and selection rule of OAM in photon-phonon coupling are studied, in which intersection research between photonic OAM and photon-phonon conversion is formed. In this study, the reversible parametric conversion for a well-defined OAM state between light and sound is demonstrated for the first time, moreover, the SBS noise can be filtered out via adding OAM labels to light signals. At last, the mechanism of transverse breakup of twisted light carrying net OAM during SBS non-linear propagation is revealed.The innovation and outstanding significance of this work: with research clue of OAM carrying light's physical feature, for revisiting the long-standing debate in quantum mechanics that are quantum states real, we first proposed the new scheme of twisted double slits via using the cutting-edge finding in optics;then, we focus on the frontier research demand of light field manipulation, open the new way for high-dimension nonlinear light-matter interface by exploring photon-phonon coupling. |
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