Nondiffracting vortex-beams in a birefringent chiral crystal

TL;DR

This paper presents a vector wave analysis of nondiffracting vortex beams in birefringent chiral crystals, revealing how eigenmodes behave and how optical vortices can be generated even without linear birefringence.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive vector wave analysis for nondiffracting beams in birefringent chiral crystals, including eigenmode characterization and vortex generation mechanisms.

Findings

Eigenmodes are non-uniformly polarized across the beam cross-section.

Purely chiral crystals can generate optical vortices without initial vortices.

Characteristic equations and propagation constants for eigenmodes are derived.

Abstract

A vector wave analysis of nondiffracting beams propagating along a birefringent chiral crystal for the case of tensor character both of the optical activity and linear birefringence is presented, fields of eigen modes satisfying vector wave equation. We have written characteristic equations and found propagation constants and amplitude parameters of eigen modes. We have shown that the field of eigen modes is non-uniformly polarized in the beam cross-section. We have revealed that even a purely chiral crystal without a linear birefringent can generate optical vortices in an initially vortex-free Bessel beam.