Abstract

Interference of a vortex beam with a reference beam can specify the amount of orbital angular momentum carried by the beam. In this study, we demonstrate that the vortex beam produces spiral-shaped interference fringes when interfered with its converging and laterally displaced copy. The analysis will help determine the topological charge, especially its sign. Theoretical description, including intensity and phase profile, has been presented. It is expected that the demonstrated technique would find application in diverse areas, such as in the fields of optical communication and spiral interferometry.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

Modified Mach–Zehnder interferometer for determining the high-order topological charge of Laguerre–Gaussian vortex beams

Praveen Kumar and Naveen K. Nishchal
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 36(8) 1447-1455 (2019)

Characteristics of fork-shaped fringes formed by off-axis interference of two vortex beams

Jingbo Ma, Peng Li, Ziheng Zhou, and Yuzong Gu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 38(1) 115-123 (2021)

Measurement of the fractional topological charge of an optical vortex beam through interference fringe dislocation

Allarakha Shikder and Naveen K. Nishchal
Appl. Opt. 62(10) D58-D67 (2023)

Detecting the topological charge of optical vortex beams using a sectorial screen

Ruishan Chen, Xiaoqiang Zhang, Yong Zhou, Hai Ming, Anting Wang, and Qiwen Zhan
Appl. Opt. 56(16) 4868-4872 (2017)

Generation of Stokes singularities using polarization lateral shear interferometer

Gauri Arora and P. Senthilkumaran
Opt. Express 30(15) 27583-27592 (2022)