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research article

Topological radiation from vortex masers

Qin, Haoye  
•
Xiang, Rongrong  
•
Jafargholi, Amir  
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November 28, 2025
Nature Communications

Vortex singularities in acoustic and electromagnetic fields are instrumental degrees of freedom in advanced wavefront-shaping schemes and robust high-throughput communications. Laser sources that emit coherent vortices in free space have been demonstrated at optical frequencies, however their microwave counterparts, vortex masers , have remained entirely unexplored, despite their promising application potential as low-noise quantum sources and sensors. Here, we demonstrate a room-temperature maser emitting pulses of electromagnetic radiation with polarization and phase vortices, based on the physics of 3D topological vectorial singularities. Nontrivial microwave photons with polarization winding are emitted from a maser made of a subwavelength dielectric cavity filled with an organic gain medium. By topping the cavity with a chiral metasurface, the circular polarizations decouple, allowing the masing of pulses with nonzero orbital angular momentum revealed through nontrivial wavefront winding. Our work paves the way for multidimensional vortex and singularity emission from volumetric coherent microwave sources, topological photonic radiation, and novel practical applications of masers.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1038/s41467-025-65787-9
Author(s)
Qin, Haoye  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Xiang, Rongrong  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Jafargholi, Amir  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Zhang, Zhe  

EPFL

Fleury, Romain  

EPFL

Date Issued

2025-11-28

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Published in
Nature Communications
Volume

16

Article Number

10750

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LWE  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

181232

Available on Infoscience
December 4, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/256670
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