Vortex knots in light

2004/11/30 by J. Leach, Jonathan Leach, M. R. Dennis +5 · 253 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Beam (structure) #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Laser #Laser beams #Light beam #Mechanics #Optical vortex #Optics #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Physics #Spatial light modulator #Vortex #physics.optics

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/7/1/055

published in New Journal of Physics 7, 55 (IOP Publishing) · 11 pages, 6 figures

arxiv created 2005/01/11 · openalex publication_date 2005/02/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Optical vortices generically arise when optical beams are combined. Recently, we reported how several laser beams containing optical vortices could be combined to form optical vortex loops, links and knots embedded in a light beam (Leach et al 2004 Nature 432 165). Here, we describe in detail the experiments in which vortex loops form these structures. The experimental construction follows a theoretical model originally proposed by Berry and Dennis, and the beams are synthesized using a programmable spatial light modulator and imaged using a CCD camera.

Citations

• Stable knot-like structures in classical field theory
• Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes

Cited by

• Unified Approach towards the Dynamics of Optical and Electron Vortex Beams
• Topological Properties of Spatial Coherence Function
• Optical vortex trajectories as probes for wavefront aberrations
• Topological links and knots of speckled light mediated by coherence singularities