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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
Laguerre-Gauss and Bessel-Gauss beams in uniaxial crystals
Gabriella Cincotti1, Alessandro Ciattoni, Claudio Palma
1Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettronica, Università Roma Tre, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia Unità di Roma, Rome, Italy. g.cincotti@uniroma3.it
Abstract:
A simple correspondence between the paraxial propagation formulas along the optical axis of a uniaxial crystal and inside an isotropic medium is found in the case of beams with linearly polarized circularly symmetric boundary distributions. The electric fields of the ordinary and the extraordinary beams are related to the corresponding expressions in a medium with refractive index n(o) and n(e)2/n(o), where n(o) and n(e) are the ordinary and the extraordinary refractive indexes, respectively. Closed-form expressions for Laguerre-Gauss and Bessel-Gauss beams propagating through an anisotropic crystal are given.
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