Distortion of a twisted beam passing through a plasma layer

In this paper, we explore what happens to the intensity profile, phase distribution, and centroid position of a vortex beam (VB) when it passes through a cold collision-less magnetized plasma layer. For this purpose, we utilize angular spectral expansion accompanied by a 4×4 matrix method to obtain the total transmission coefficient, intensity and phase profiles, and centroid shifts of VBs in the output plane. Based on numerical analyses, it is found that the evolution of transverse intensity as well as the distortion of the phase profile of transmitted VBs are greatly affected by variation of radial and angular mode numbers, external magnetic field, plasma number density, and incident angle. In addition, displacement of the VB centroid under variation of angular mode numbers is presented quantitatively. It is expected that the results of this study will give more insight into VB communication, radar probing, and plasma diagnostics.