Litchinitser makes use of metamaterials to manipulate electric and magnetic fields, engineering shaped beams of light. These shaped beams (rather than the typical 'circular' beam, a beam that is shaped more like a vortex) of light allow access to otherwise forbidden higher-order spectroscopic transitions. Metamaterials offer the potential to tailor the orbital angular momentum and polarisation states of light. Circularly polarised light involves an electric field that rotates around the direction of propagation, such that the photons carry spin angular momentum. When spin-orbit interactions are controlled, spin angular momentum can be converted into orbital angular momentum. Orbital angular momentum (or vortex beams) can make symmetry-forbidden transitions possible, with a transition rate that increases when the size of the beam decreases. She has since shown that it is possible to measure a vortex laser's orbital angular momentum modes using a tunable micro-transceiver chip-based detector, offering hope that such systems could be used for fast data transmission. The detector makes use of a photodetector that is responsive to orbital angular momentum modes.