In the neighborhood of the cusp of the "double" caustic produced by the y- polarized convergent eo- and ee- beams, a single isolated optical vortex was found to exist. The observed single vortices are formed only under four strictly defined angular orientations of the incident collimated light beam relative to the entrance face of two-component crystal-optics element (TCE). As the direction of propagation of a collimated laser beam striking normally the TCE is reversed, a distinct localized quadrupole optical vortex consisting of four closely spaced vortices with pairwise-opposite topological charges -1, +1, +1, and -1 forms close to the cusp of this caustic (diffraction catastrophe). The analysis of quadrupole vortex formed by TCE was done for comparative purpose because both vortex fields are formed near the corresponding paraxial foci by the same crystal-optical element.

Date Published: 9 April 2011
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 7822, Laser Optics 2010, 78220G (9 April 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.885477

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7822:
Laser Optics 2010
Nikolay N. Rosanov; Vladimir Yu. Venediktov, Editor(s)