Deterministic approach to the generation of modified helical beams for optical manipulation

Abstract

We present a deterministic method to generate modified helical beams which create optical vortices with desired dark core intensity patterns in the far-field. The experiments are implemented and verified by a spatial light modulator (SLM), which imprints a phase function onto the incident wavefront of a TEM00 laser mode to transform the incident beam into a modified helical beam. The phase function can be calculated once a specific dark core shape of an optical vortex is required. The modified helical beam is exploited in optical manipulation with verification of its orbital angular momentum experimentally.