Conservation of orbital angular momentum in crystals with a random domain distribution of nonlinearity in SHG

Abstract

In this master thesis we build an experimental setup for studying the conservation of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light in second harmonic generation (SHG) in Strontium Barium Niobate (SBN) crystals with random distribution of domains with inverted nonlinearity. Different methods to generate and measure OAM were implemented and the OAM conservation in SHG process in different kind of nonlinear crystals was studied. The experimental results point to the macroscopic non-conservation of the OAM in the family of nonlinear random crystals in SHG process.