Paper
31 December 2003 Optical vortex trajectories through paraxial modal analysis
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Abstract
Optical vortices are ubiquitous in coherent optical beams -- they appear naturally in speckle fields and can also be excited artificially with, for instance, diffractive optical elements. An understanding of the propagation of such vortices would be useful for applications of this phenomenon. A method is provided to compute the trajectories of optical vortices in complicated scenarios. The Gaussian beam in which the vortices are embedded is expressed in terms of paraxial modes. The positions of the vortices as a function of the propagation distance can then be computed analytically. The case of a vortex dipole is analyzed and shown to undergo annihilation and revival of the pair under certain conditions. Expressions are provided for the trajectories of a canonically launched vortex dipole. The analytical predictions are compared with numerical simulations.
© (2003) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Filippus S. Roux "Optical vortex trajectories through paraxial modal analysis", Proc. SPIE 5182, Wave-Optical Systems Engineering II, (31 December 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.503583
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KEYWORDS
Optical vortices

Modal analysis

Diffractive optical elements

Gaussian beams

Numerical simulations

Speckle

Systems engineering

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