Vitality of optical vortices (Presentation)

Abstract

This presentation discusses the vitality of optical vortices to distinguish between vortex dipole creation and annihilation events. Vitality is expressed in terms of the transverse 1st and 2nd order derivatives of the optical field. It can be used to compute the probability density for the difference of creation and annihilation events, but only gives unambiguous identification of the type of event at the location of a critical point.