Diagnostics of the topological charge of optical vortex by a phase-diffractive element

Abstract

A phase-diffractive optical element is designed to measure the topological charge of optical vortices. We use the scalar diffraction theory to calculate the far-field diffraction patterns. The simulation results show that almost all of the power of the incident beams is diffracted to the same diffraction order, and this approach is also effective for multi-ring optical vortices. We upload this phase-diffractive optical element on the liquid crystal spatial light modulator to do the experiment. The observed far-field diffraction patterns fit well with the simulation results.