Generation of a hollow Gaussian beam and its anomalous behavior

I attempted to produce a laser beam with no light in the central line of the beam, by Fresnel diffraction of the Gaussian beam by a spiral zone plate (SZP). The study imparts an arbitrary-order phase singularity on the light field. The experimental results show that the optical vortex radius depends on the singularity’s integer order n (also termed topological charge, or order of the dislocation). Also, the radius of maximum intensity is shown to depend on the singularity number. Anomalous behavior of the spectra at phase singularity produced by various zone plates near the focus of a converging Gaussian beam is also studied using a simple experimental technique. It is found that the spectrum of the beam on the SZP (spiral zone plate) consisting of a single spectral profile shows almost vanishing intensity at all frequencies with a tendency of splitting into two peaks at the on-axis point and shows redshift and blueshift around the phase singularity. A comparative study of the anomalous behavior of the spectra at phase singularity produced by various SZPs, with varying phase singularity order n, near the focus of a converging Gaussian laser beam is studied.