Evaluation of a phase shifting method for vortex localization in optical vortex interferometry

The optical vortex interferometer uses a regular lattice of the optical vortices. In the previous papers we showed that changes in vortex lattice geometry can be related to physical quantities of the object being measured. The accuracy of such a measurement depends strongly on the precision of vortex point localization (vortex points are points where wavefront phase is undetermined). In this paper we compared the measurements of object wave tilt calculated from different localization methods applied to real interferograms and evaluate various localization methods.     

Optical sorting using an array of optical vortices with fractional topological charge

An array of optical vortices with fractional topological charge is generated using a phase-only Talbot array illuminator and used to sort microparticles. Our theoretical analysis and experimental results reveal that when a particle passes through a fractional vortex array, it will be driven by two forces, intensity-gradient force and phase-gradient force, and the cooperation of these two forces can improve its ability in optical sorting because of the special intensity and phase distribution of the fractional optical vortex array. Larger angle separation could be obtained with moderate laser power.     

Measuring the topological charge of an optical vortex by using a tilted convex lens

We demonstrate, analytically and experimentally, a simple, but effective method to determine the topological charge of an optical vortex by using a spherical bi-convex lens, a ubiquitous optical element found in any optics laboratory. Just by tilting the lens and recording the intensity distribution of a propagating vortex at a predicted position past the lens, we have been able to measure both the sign and the magnitude of the topological charge m   up to m=±14$m=\pm 14$. Our experimental results are in excellent agreement with analytical predictions.     

Lateral diffusion of the topological charge density in stochastic optical fields

Stochastic (i.e. random and quasi-random) optical fields may contain distributions of optical vortices that are represented by non-uniform topological charge densities. Numerical simulations are used to investigate the evolution under free-space propagation of topological charge densities that are inhomogeneous along one dimension. It is shown that this evolution is described by a diffusion process that has a diffusion parameter which depends on the propagation distance.     

两束离轴高斯光束干涉场中的横向光涡旋

研究了两束离轴高斯光束干涉场中的波前结构以及横向光涡旋.研究表明干涉场中的相位鞍点以及涡旋点的位置与光束的离轴参数、束腰宽度、相位以及相对振幅有关.相位鞍点既可位于涡旋点的内侧，也可以位于涡旋点的外侧，且控制参数取一定值时，相位鞍点将与涡旋点重合.对于离轴光束，XZ平面两侧的相位鞍点与涡旋点相遇时所对应的控制参数并不相同，且XZ平面上相位鞍点相遇时所对应x值，一般情况下与涡旋点相遇时所对应的x值不相同.     

Measuring the topological charge of optical vortices with an axicon

We analyzed the spatial spectrum of the diffraction intensity pattern of an ideal Bessel beam and found an implicit rule that the number of the bright rings in the spatial spectrum is equal to the topological charge of the Bessel beam. The radius of the bright and dark rings has some relation with the topological charge and can be determined accurately. It provides us with a new way for measuring the topological charge of an optical vortex through its diffraction intensity pattern after an axicon. The results of simulation coincide with the theory.     

Polarization vortex spatial optical solitons in Bessel optical lattices

We investigate the formation of polarization vortex spatial optical solitons in optical lattice induced by a non-diffracting Bessel beam. The properties of these solitons in zeroth-order and first-order Bessel lattices with focusing and defocusing Kerr nonlinearity are discussed. It is found that these solitons have some analogies with phase vortex solitons carrying single positive or negative topological charge in these lattices. Besides, these polarization vortex solitons have complicated dynamical characteristic and can be stabilized in some parameter region.     

Measuring the topological charge of optical vortices with a single plate

Measuring the topological charge(TC) of optical vortex beams by the edge-diffraction pattern of a single plate is proposed and demonstrated. The diffraction fringes can keep well discernible in a wide three-dimensional range in this method. The redundant fringes of the diffracted fork-shaped pattern in the near-field can determine the TC value, and the orientation of the fork tells the handedness of the vortex. The plate can be opaque or translucent, and the requirement of the translucent plate ...     

Conversion of topological charge of optical vortices in a parametric frequency converter

It is shown that sum-frequency generation of light beams with vortices allows to construct vortices of different topological charges. An optical parametric amplifier enables to produce a vortex with opposite topological charge (to the reverse vortex). In this way, a frequency converter can be seen as a prototype of an optical processor which allows to produce simple arithmetical operations with topological charges of the interacting vortices.     

Diffraction characteristics of optical vortex passing through an aperture-iris diaphragm

The diffraction of an optical vortex through an iris diaphragm which is a close approximation to a circular aperture has been investigated. The results are compared with those obtained from the diffraction of a Gaussian beam through the same aperture. In our findings the diffraction of an optical vortex and a Gaussian beam produce ball bearing sort of structure of darkness and brightness. The singularity of the vortex beam is found to be consistent even after the diffraction through the aperture. The presence of singularity at the centre of diffraction pattern of an optical vortex has been confirmed by interferometry. There is a good agreement between the experimental and numerical results. We propose that these results may find various applications in optical trapping experiments.     

Composite optical vortices in two noncollinear cosh-Gaussian vortex beams and their propagation properties in free space

The composite optical vortices (OVs) formed by superimposing two parallel, noncollinear cosh-Gaussian (ChG) vortex beams at the waist plane and their propagation in free space are studied. The dependence of the number, position and net topological charge of composite OVs on the control parameter, such as the relative phase, amplitude ratio, waist-width ratio, relative off-axis distance and decentered parameter, and on the propagation distance is illustrated numerically. A comparison with the previous work is also made.     

Tunable optical vortex arrays using spontaneous periodic pattern formation in nematic liquid crystal cells

Controllable liquid crystal (LC) defects can provide an effective approach to creating tunable optical vortices. We develop a method to create tunable matter vortex arrays in an LC cell, in which +1 and −1 defects are periodically arranged in a square grid lattice. Spontaneous formation of the periodic defect array is achieved using a spontaneous standing pressure wave without using any patterned electrode or patterned alignment layer. The +1 and −1 defects in the array can induce optical vortices with opposite handedness, and the matter vortex array produces a periodic optical vortex array with orbital angular momenta of −2ℏ and +2ℏ in the same grid lattice. Because the pitch of the grid can be controlled, the method can provide a useful pathway to producing tunable optical vortex arrays for various applications such as advanced optical communication and quantum computation.     

离轴平顶高斯涡旋光束形成的合成光涡旋及其在自由空间中的传输

对两束拓扑电荷m_1,2=±1的平行、离轴平顶高斯涡旋光束在束腰面叠加形成的合成光涡旋及其在自由空间的传输做了研究.详细的数值计算和分析表明,合光涡旋的位置、数目和净拓扑电荷与光束的控制参数,包括相对位相,振幅比,束腰宽度比,相对离轴参数,光束阶数,以及传输距离有关,但拓扑电荷不总是守恒. 关键词： 奇点光学 合成光涡旋 平顶高斯涡旋光束 拓扑电荷     

Full-vectorial analysis of optical vortex propagation in anisotropic cubic-quintic non-linear optical medium

This paper presents for the first time a full-vectorial analysis of optical vortex propagation in anisotropic cubic-quintic (CQ) non-linear medium. The purpose is to investigate the energy transfer mechanism and stability between orthogonal field components and how they are affected by the presence of material anisotropy in CQ materials. The numerical simulations were carried out via a three-dimensional finite difference based beam propagation method (3D-FD-BPM) which is capable of handling variations in any of the permittivity tensor components. Therefore, in this work we allowed all tensor components to vary independently and simulate vortex propagation for distances several times longer than the diffraction length. We expect that this work can provide new and important information regarding the behavior of these objects that may become valuable for the design of new photonic devices.     

Propagation dynamics of optical vortices in Laguerre–Gaussian beams

We have calculated the propagation dynamics of an initial off-axis vortex with topological charge 1 in Laguerre–Gaussian background beams , which are examples of background beams with non-generic dislocation surfaces, on which the real and imaginary parts of the light field are zero. When initially a vortex with broad core (e.g., r-vortex) is embedded in the background beam, the dislocation surfaces are destroyed during propagation and two vortices with opposite charge are created per dislocation surface in planes perpendicular to the propagation direction. For a vortex with narrow core (e.g., point vortex) diffraction is important and leads to the birth of more than two vortices per dislocation surface. These results are also valid for other background beams with dislocation surfaces, e.g., Hermite–Gaussian and Ince–Gaussian beams. We investigated experimentally the spatial evolution of the intensity distribution of an initial off-axis vortex with narrow core and topological charge 1 in background beams. The experimental results are in good agreement with the calculated intensity distributions.     

Discussion and a new method of optical cryptosystem based on interference

A discussion and an objective security analysis of the well-known optical image encryption based on interference are presented in this paper. A new method is also proposed to eliminate the security risk of the original cryptosystem. For a possible practical application, we expand this new method into a hierarchical authentication scheme. In this authentication system, with a pre-generated and fixed random phase lock, different target images indicating different authentication levels are analytically encoded into corresponding phase-only masks (phase keys) and amplitude-only masks (amplitude keys). For the authentication process, a legal user can obtain a specified target image at the output plane if his/her phase key, and amplitude key, which should be settled close against the fixed internal phase lock, are respectively illuminated by two coherent beams. By comparing the target image with all the standard certification images in the database, the system can thus verify the user's legality even his/her identity level. Moreover, in despite of the internal phase lock of this system being fixed, the crosstalk between different pairs of keys held by different users is low. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are both provided to demonstrate the validity of this method.     

Settled fast measurement of topological charge by direct extraction of plane wave from vortex beam

A method of measuring the vortex beam topological charge(TC) is proposed based on a device that can directly extract the plane wave form from the vortex beam in which the different propagation angles of the plane waves are uniquely related to the different TCs. Then the TC can be obtained by simply comparing the energy values perceived by two fixed sensors in the detection location with the help of twin omnidirectional energy absorbers(OEAs). Because the settled detection relies only on the simple quantitative value at two fixed positions, neither pattern recognition nor field analysis procedure is applied, thus allowing faster measurement. Some features of the methodology are investigated, and the numerical simulations verify the feasibility and robustness of the system.     

A new wavelet transform for reliability-guided phase unwrapping of optical fringe patterns

A new daughter wavelet definition for reliability-guided phase unwrapping of the optical fringe pattern is introduced. The new daughter wavelet definition is given by normalized mother wavelet with a new factor including a Gaussian function. The modulus of the wavelet transform coefficients, obtained by using daughter wavelet under this new daughter wavelet definition, includes not only modulation information but also local frequency information of the deformed fringe pattern. Therefore, it can be treated as a good parameter which represents the reliability of the reconstructed phase data. Mathematical demonstration of this parameter is given. Both the computer simulation and experiment reveal the validity of the proposed method.     

The topological structure of vortex in BEC

We find that there exists an elementary topological current in Bose-Einstein condensation. Based on the -mapping topological current theory, the implicit function theorem and the Taylor expansion, the topological structure of vortex lines is detailed in the neighborhoods of the bifurcation points of the condensate wave function. Received: 9 April 1998 / Revised: 28 August 1998 / Accepted: 31 August 1998     

部分相干涡旋光束叠加场中的合成相干涡旋及其动态传输

对由两束平行、离轴部分相干平顶涡旋光束叠加形成的合成相干涡旋做了详细研究.结果表明:合成相干涡旋的数目和位置与光束阶数、相对离轴距离、相干参数以及相对传输距离有关.在部分相干范畴内“隐藏”的合成相干涡旋对应于完全相干范畴中的合成光涡旋.并且证明在相干极限下合成相干涡旋就演化为合成光涡旋. 关键词： 相关奇点光学 合成相干涡旋 部分相干平顶光束 离轴合成