Rotationally induced vortices in optical cavity modes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that rotating an astigmatic optical cavity induces vortices in its modes, analyzing their properties through an exact first-order approximation using bosonic ladder operators.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to study vortex formation in rotating optical cavities using quantum harmonic oscillator techniques.

Findings

Vortices appear in cavity modes under rotation.

The properties of these vortices are characterized.

Numerical results validate the theoretical approach.

Abstract

We show that vortices appear in the modes of an astigmatic optical cavity when it is put into rotation about its optical axis. We study the properties of these vortices and discuss numerical results for a specific realization of such a set-up. Our method is exact up to first order in the time-dependent paraxial approximation and involves bosonic ladder operators in the spirit of the quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillator.