Vortex preserving statistical optical beams

Zhiheng Xu, Xiaofei Li, Xin Liu, Sergey A. Ponomarenko, Yangjian Cai, and Chunhao Liang

We establish a general form of the cross-spectral density of statistical sources that generate vortex preserving partially coherent beams on propagation through any linear ABCD optical system. We illustrate our results by introducing a class of partially coherent vortex beams with a closed form cross-spectral density at the source and demonstrating the beam vortex structure preservation on free space propagation and imaging by a thin lens. We also show the capacity of such vortex preserving beams of any state of spatial coherence to trap nanoparticles with the refractive index smaller than that of a surrounding medium.

DOI