Abstract

We revisit the widely studied subject of screening in optical fields by topological charges and show that screening does not depend on charge ordering. Instead, for an array of $N$ charges, screening requires that the variance of the charge fluctuations be small compared to $N$. We show by means of explicit examples that, when this requirement is met, screening can be complete, even for a spatially random arrangement of charges. We derive a minimal screening constraint on the charge correlation function and show that it is this constraint that is met in practice, rather than the more stringent constraints previously assumed.

© 2015 Optical Society of America

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