Investigation of the center intensity of first- and second-order Laguerre-Gaussian beams with linear and circular polarization

Abstract

The vectorial Debye integral shows that tightly focused Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams have a residual intensity at the focal point for linear polarization, for a topological charge of m=1 and 2. We measured the shapes of linearly and circularly polarized LG beams and found that a central intensity appeared at m=1 and 2 for linear and right-handed circular polarization, however, it is completely canceled for left-handed circular polarization. In general, when the orbital angular momentum of the LG beam is parallel to the spin angular momentum of the photons, zero intensity is always achieved at the focus.