Generalized expression for optical source fields

A generalized optical beam expression is developed that presents the majority of the existing optical source fields such as Bessel, Laguerre–Gaussian, dark hollow, bottle, super Gaussian, Lorentz, super-Lorentz, flat-topped, Hermite–sinusoidal-Gaussian, sinusoidal-Gaussian, annular, Gauss–Legendre, vortex, also their higher order modes with their truncated, elegant and elliptical versions. Source intensity profiles derived from the generalized optical source beam fields are checked to match the intensity profiles of many individual known beam types. Source intensities for several interesting beam combinations are presented. Our generalized optical source beam field expression can be used to examine both the source characteristics and the propagation properties of many different optical beams in a single formulation.