Optical vortices are employed in optical trapping applications for their ability to set microparticles into rotation. Devil’s Vortex Lenses have high diffraction efficiency and it is possible to take advantage of their particular volumetric focal structure to design versatile and efficient optical tweezers. In this communication, we report a simple design procedure, involving arrays of Devil’s Vortex-Lenses implemented in a programmable Spatial Light Modulator, for generating spatial distributions of optical vortices. In our approach, the preferred position and topological charge value can be assigned to each vortex in the structure, tuning the desired angular momentum. We have demonstrated the generation of 3D optical vortex distributions through arrays of Devil’s Vortex-Lenses, including configurations with charges and momenta of opposite sign. Our experimental results present an excellent agreement with the simulations we have developed.

Date Published: 18 November 2013
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 8785, 8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications, 87854T (18 November 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2026237

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8785:
8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications
Manuel Filipe P. C. Martins Costa, Editor(s)