Measuring OAM states of light beams with gradually-changing-period gratings

A method to measure orbital angular momentum (OAM) states of light beams by using gradually-changing-period gratings is reported. Two kinds of gradually-changing-period gratings were used for the measurement of OAM states. The OAM states of the incident beam can be measured easily from the Hermite-Gaussian-like diffraction patterns. The simulation results agree well with the experiments.