Formation of optical vortices using coherent laser beam arrays

We present a proposal to generate an optical vortex beam by using the coherent-superposition of multi-beams in a radially symmetric configuration. In terms of the generalized Huygens–Fresnel diffraction integral, we have derived the general propagation expression for the coherent radial arrays of laser beams. Using the derived formulae, we have analyzed the effects of the beamlet number N, the separation distance ρ of the beamlets and the topological charge m on the intensity and phase distributions of the resultant beams. Our simulation results show that optical vortices could be efficiently generated due to the coherent-superposition effect of all beamlets, during the propagation process of the coherent radial array of laser beams with the initial well-organized phase distributions through the free space. In the focusing system, the resultant beam near the focusing plane has the strong rotational effect with the phase helicity.