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Published on: February 1, 2017
Noncanonical orbital angular momentum vortices with Jacobi-Anger expansion via curvilinear polygonal phase
Abstract:
Optical vortex beams carrying OAM are vital for anisotropic light-matter interactions. However, conventional uniform phase gradients restrict them to isotropic ring-shaped profiles. Here, we propose a deterministic method for generating optical vortex beams with polygonal caustic skeletons, which manifest macroscopically as petal-like caustics in the wave-optics regime, with customizable geometries, from triangles to hexagons, via a continuous harmonic phase modulation. Additionally, using a Jacobi-Anger expansion, we reveal that the observed petal-like caustics originate from a coherent superposition of a discrete OAM frequency comb, whose spectral envelope is governed by an effective modulation index Aeff = ℓ0α. Despite severe geometric deformation, the topological charge remains rigorously conserved. This analytical approach, requiring no iterative optimization, offers a versatile platform for anisotropic optical trapping, rotatable optical cages, high-dimensional OAM multiplexing, and is readily compatible with implementation using spatial light modulators or metasurfaces.
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