Washing with Vortices

Interferometry with Vortices

Interference of optical beams with optical vortices is often encountered in singular optics. Since interferometry makes the phase observable by intensity measurement, it brings out a host of applications and helps to understand the optical vortex. In this article we present an optical vortex interferometer that can be used in optical testing and has the potential to increase the accuracy of mea...

Green Washing

Fresnel Lens with Embedded Vortices

Vortices of different charges are embedded in a wavefront that has quadratic phase variation, and the intensity distribution near the focal plane is studied. This method may be useful in realizing complicated beam profiles. We have experimentally demonstrated the generation of vortex arrays having integer as well as fractional topological charges that produce different intensity profiles at the...

Supercontinuum generation with optical vortices.

We employ an optical vortex beam for the generation of femtosecond supercontinuum in a solid state medium. We demonstrate that the continuum generation process is initiated by the filamentation of the vortex, resulting in a spatially divergent continuum. Despite the strong self-focusing and the formation of multiple hot-spots along the vortex ring, the singularity is preserved in both the near-...

Vortices ∗

I discuss in these lectures vortex-like classical solutions to the equations of motion of gauge theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. Starting from the Nielsen-Olesen ansatz for the Abelian Higgs model, extensions to the case in which gauge dynamics is governed by Yang-Mills and Chern-Simons actions are presented. The case of semilocal vortices and also the coupling to axions is analyzed...