Phys.org October 1, 2024
When reflected from an interface, a laser beam generally drifts and tilts away from the path predicted by ray optics, an intriguing consequence of its finite transverse extent. For twisted light, such beam shifts manifest even more dramatically: upon reflection, a field containing a high-order optical vortex is expected to experience not only geometrical shifts, but an additional splitting of its high-order vortex into a constellation of unit-charge vortices, a phenomenon known as topological aberration. In an experiment an international team of researchers (Finland, Brazil) observed topological aberration effect verified through the deformation of vortex constellations upon reflection. They developed a general theoretical framework to study topological aberrations in terms of the elementary symmetric polynomials of the coordinates of a vortex constellation, a mathematical abstraction which they proved to be the physical quantity of practical interest… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Measurement results. Credit: Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 8162, 17 September 2024