Supermode fiber for orbital angular momentum (OAM) transmission.

We present a multi-orbital-angular-momentum (OAM) multi-core supermode fiber (MOMCSF) to transmit OAM modes. The MOMCSF consists of equally-spaced and circularly-arranged multiple cores, in which the core pitch is small enough to support strong coupling OAM supermodes. The characteristics of OAM modes in MOMCSFs with different core pitches and core numbers are analyzed. The performances of mode coupling and nonlinearity are optimized by designing multiple degrees of freedom of the supermode fiber. The obtained results show that the designed MOMCSF can transmit multiple OAM modes with favorable performance of low mode coupling, low nonlinearity, and low modal dependent loss.