paper

Vortex Propagation in Orbital Angular Momentum Beams and the Effects of a Limited Aperture

arXiv:2510.20257 · doi:10.1088/2040-8986/ae681e

Abstract

When generating light with orbital angular momentum by imprinting orbital phase onto a standard Gaussian beam, it is often assumed that the propagation of the generated spatial mode is a Laguerre-Gaussian. However, the true propagation of this beam in a realistic, aperture-limited optical system is non-trivial and has not been thoroughly explored in existing literature. We explore a numerical model that shows the development of an optical vortex mode, propagating from the plane of phase modulation, and the relation of these dynamics to the orbital phase factor and the spatial bandwidth of the optical system. The results of this model are compared to experimental data for beams with values 1, 2, 5, and 10 propagating through a range of spatial filters, with the described model showing agreement in the near field regime.

arXiv comment17 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (16)