Observation of the vortex structure of a non-integer vortex beam

By Jonathan Leach, E. Yao, Miles J. Padgett. 2004

344 citations recorded by the source corpus.

An optical beam with an eilϕ phase structure carries an orbital angular momentum of lℏ per photon. For integer l values, the phase fronts of such beams form perfect helices with a single screw-phase dislocation, or vortex, on the beam axis. For non-integer l values, Berry (2004 J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 6 259) predicts a complex-phase structure comprising many vortices at differing positions within the beam cross-section. Using a spatial light modulator we produce eilϕ beams with varying l. We examine the phase structure of such beams after propagation through an interference-based phase-measurement technique. As predicted, we observe that for half-integer l values, a line of alternating charge vortices is formed near the radial dislocation.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering, Reproductive Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/19a1342cf1551780b87dd1a508df46a719e0f76c

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Biomedical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Roadmap on spatiotemporal light fields (2022, result): “This result is in sharp contrast to the previous three-decade-long experience with monochromatic vortex beams [51–54] (for non-integer monochromatic vortex beams see [60]).”
Vortex knots in light (2004, methodology): “Also shown here is the measured phase pattern of the beam, showing that the dark vortex threads are indeed singularities of the optical phase (this phase distribution was measured according to the methods described in [23].”
Theory and applications of free-electron vortex states (2017, background): “the step was not an integer times 2π in that experiment, the output electron wave possessed a non-integer vortex [137, 138], which can be regarded as a superposition of several vortex states with different quantum”