Experimental investigation in Airy transform of Gaussian beams with optical vortex

Abstract

The Airy transform was first introduced for a Gaussian beam, and the output beam is an Airy beam. When the Gaussian beam is extended to the Gaussian beam with optical vortex, what kind of output beam will be achieved by executing the Airy transformation. Therefore, the experimental research on Airy transformation of a Gaussian beam with optical vortex is carried out, including the generation of Gaussian beams with optical vortex, the realization of Airy transform, and the related measurements of the output beams. The phase pattern is indirect measured and is recovered from the intensity pattern which is the interference result of a plane wave and the output beam. The experimental measurement results of the light intensity and the phase patterns of transformed Gaussian beams with the optical vortex are consistent with the corresponding numerical simulation results. Based on the first and the second moments of light intensity, the centroid and the beam size are measured. According to the hyperbolic law of the beam width along the axial propagation distance, the propagation factor of the output beam is measured. The influences of the Airy coefficients and the topological charge on the intensity pattern, the phase pattern, the centroid, the beam size, and the propagation factor of transformed Gaussian beams with optical vortex are experimentally investigated, respectively. The intensity pattern, the phase pattern, the centroid, the beam size, and the propagation factor of a transformed Gaussian beam with optical vortex are also compared with those of the corresponding transformed Gaussian vortex beam. This experiment fully proves the effect of the optical vortex on the Airy transformation of Gaussian beams. Meanwhile, this study offers an optional method to generate Airy-like beams from Gaussian beams with optical vortex, which is beneficial to the applications of Gaussian beams with optical vortex.