Precision Construction of Chiral Optical Fields with Nine Controllable Degrees of Freedom

Recently, chiral optical fields (COFs) have garnered significant attention due to their multiple controllable degrees of freedom (DOFs), enabling applications in diverse areas such as optical tweezers, manufacturing, and holographic encryption. However, existing schemes fail to achieve precise control over certain aspects, particularly the fine-tuning of sidelobes, including their overall shape and structural characteristics, which limits their practical applications. Herein, an approach to achieve fine sculpting of COFs using a modular multilayer annular phase plate (MMAPP) is proposed. By adjusting the number and mode of the annular spiral phase in the two modules of the MMAPP, as well as the axicon phase, the high-order cross phase, and the low-order cross phase, the experimental manipulation of nine DOFs of COFs is demonstrated, including the chirality, size, sidelobe number, sidelobe distortion degree, sidelobe segment length, sidelobe segment rotation direction, overall polygonal shape, ellipticity, and rotation angle. The proposed method enhances the modulation capabilities of COFs and gives rise to potential applications in particle manipulation and information encryption.