Abstract
Spatial correlated vortex arrays may form in the same beam when a random source contains multiple helical phase structures. We introduced two types of partially coherent sources with Cartesian and polar symmetric helical phase structure and reveal the characteristics of their radiated fields, respectively. It is demonstrated that far fields generated by these families of sources carry interesting features through the joint regulation of coherence and topological charge, being lattice-like vortex patterns with adjustable dimension and shape.
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1. Introduction
Optical beams carrying a helical phase structure around the axis with the phase singularity on the axis, known as optical vortices [1,2], have recently become the focus of many theoretical investigations and found applications in optical tweezers, micromanipulation [3], optical communications [4] and quantum information processes [5]. In addition to a single optical vortex, vortex arrays are of particular interest in manipulating the systems of particles [6], driving micro-optomechanical pumps [7], processing quantum information and micro-lithography [8]. Vortex arrays can be generated by plane or spherical wave interference method [9], helical phase-space filtering method [10], hollow multimode waveguide method [11], fractional Talbot effect method [12], etc. However, many of these studies are restricted to the domain of fully coherent vortex beams, leaving aside possible fluctuations of light.
Compared with the fully coherent fields, the partially coherent vortex beams can effectively overcome the light intensity flicker and light spot diffusion effects caused by propagation [13]. A partially coherent source or field is typically characterized by its second-order, two-point (generally complex-valued) correlation function [14], and hence, the phase singularity may arise as a vortex-like structure in its argument, rather than in the argument of the filed itself [15]. The extension of the concept of optical vortex from coherent field to correlation singularity was shown to be far from trivial [16]. Subsequent theoretical studies of correlation vortices have resulted in a number of mathematical models [17–19]. It is shown that partially coherent vortex beams with special correlation functions, have more freedom for beam shaping, have unique characteristics such as self-splitting, self-shaping and self-focusing [20–22], so they have more advantages in practical applications. However, except for a recent paper on a vortex array embedded in a partially coherent beam which leads to a very special array structure [23], no other models are available for generating partially coherent vortex arrays with different geometries. This present work was motivated by the desire to generate vortex array embedded in a partially coherent beam. The single optical vortex is characterized by the helical phase structure with the phase singularity. To achieve this aim of generating vortex arrays in the same beam, we present a class of planar sources with cross-spectral density (CSD) possessing phase structures with multiple phase singularities. As we shown, such sources can form vortex arrays with different periodic structures. Furthermore, we demonstrate how both the topological charge and the coherence length of source field affect the far-field spectral densities.
2. Spatial correlated rectangular vortex arrays
For fully coherent beams, the field amplitude is generally used to characterize them. The electric field of a coherent scalar beam containing a single optical vortex in the initial transverse plane may be expressed as [18]
where $\mathbf{\rho }$ is the position vector of field point with polar and Cartesian coordinates of $\mathbf{\rho }$ being $(\rho ,\phi )$ and $(x,y)$, $A(\rho )$ is the electric field amplitude of the beam, $\beta $ is an arbitrary phase and l is the topological charge.If multiple vortices exist in the same beam and present the $S \times T$ rectangular array, one may select the following form of the initial field
For partially coherent beams, they are usually characterized by cross-spectral density (CSD) function in space-frequency domain, i.e,
The propagation law of the CSD function at a pair of points $({\mathbf{r}_1},z)$ and $({\mathbf{r}_2},z)$ across a transverse plane of the half-space $z > 0$ are related to those in the source plane as [14]
The case of $l = 1$ and $S \times T = 4 \times 4$ is shown in Fig. 5 for different states of coherence. For low coherence cases, each vortex core fills will diffuse light. With the increase of the relative coherence length, the diffuse light in the core gradually weakens, and finally forms a rectangular array of dark vortex cores with minimum intensity that is close to zero.
3. Spatial correlated radial vortex arrays
If multiple vortices exist in the same beam and are uniformly distributed in a ring with radius d, the initial field can be represented as
Substituting Eq. (16) into Eq. (10), converting the four dimensional integrate into the product of two two-dimensional integrals, we can arrive at the same formula as Eq. (11), but the integral function is given by the expression
The far-field spectral density generated by a random source with $M = 8$ and $l = 2$ for different states of coherence is shown in Fig. 10. For the low coherence case, each vortex core fills with diffuse light. The high coherence case produces a circular vortex array in which the central intensity of each dark core is close to zero.
4. Conclusions
In this article, we have considered a new family of partially coherent sources, which is characterized by multiple helical phase structures. As practical examples, we modeled two types of such sources with either Cartesian or polar symmetric helical phase structure and investigated numerically the significant features of the radiated far-field intensities. We have found that such sources with any initially intensity distribution, as Gaussian in our examples, can generate lattice-like vortex radiation patterns. We also demonstrated how their features of radiated fields depend on their topological charge, array dimensions and relative coherence length. The results show the joint regulation of phase and coherence length to optical field can be used as a mechanism of generating spatial correlated vortex arrays.
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (11974107); Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LY23A040006).
Disclosures
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data availability
Data underlying the results presented in this paper are not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.
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