Creation of optical vortices in femtosecond pulses

Authors

I. G. Mariyenko, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
James Strohaber, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Cornelis J. Uiterwaal, University of Nebraska - LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

9-19-2005

Comments

Published in OPTICS EXPRESS 19 September 2005 / Vol. 13, No. 19. Copyright 2005 Optical Society of America. Used by permission.

Abstract

We experimentally created a femtosecond optical vortex using a pair of computer-synthesized holographic gratings arranged in a 2f - 2f optical setup. We present measurements showing that the resulting donut mode is free of spatial chirp, and support this finding with an analysis of the optical wave propagation through our system based on the Kirchhoff- Fresnel diffraction integral. An interferogram confirms that our ultrashort vortex has topological charge 1, and a conservative experimental estimation of its duration is 280 fs. We used 25-fs radiation pulses (bandwidth approximately 40 nm) produced by a Ti:sapphire laser oscillator.