Optical Vortex Braiding with Bessel Beams

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental creation and measurement of optical vortex braiding using Bessel beams, showing control over vortex configurations with potential applications in optical manipulation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to braid optical vortices with more than 2π rotation using superposed Bessel modes and experimentally verifies the technique.

Findings

Successfully demonstrated optical vortex braiding with Bessel beams

Measured three complete vortex braids experimentally

Braiding control is limited only by the system's numerical aperture

Abstract

We propose the braiding of optical vortices in a laser beam with more than 2{\pi} rotation by superposing Bessel modes with a plane wave. We experimentally demonstrate this by using a Bessel-Gaussian beam and a coaxial Gaussian, and we present measurement of three complete braids. The amount of braiding is fundamentally limited only by the numerical aperture of the system and we discuss how braiding can be controlled experimentally for any number of vortices.