Generation of optical vortices with diverse topological charge via angular momentum transfer

Special light beams exhibiting a structured field and carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) appear as interesting tools in different fields such as particle manipulation, telecommunications or in several areas of light-matter interaction, including materials processing and nonlinear optics, among others. A very interesting possibility of these special light beams is the coupling of spatially varying linear polarization fields ( i.e. radial or azimuthal) with spin and orbital angular momenta. Taking advantage of this interaction, we propose an in-line method to obtain collinear optical vortices exhibiting different topological charges [1] . The proposed method can be applied to focused or collimated beams, being continuous wave or pulsed.