Sephton, Bereneice CDudley, Angela LForbes, A2017-10-102017-10-102016-10Sephton, B.C., Dudley, A.L., and Forbes, A. 2016. Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams. Applied Optics, vol. 55(28): 7830-78351559-128Xhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1364/AO.55.007830https://www.osapublishing.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-55-28-7830http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9652Copyright: 2016 Optical Society of America. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file only contains the abstract of the full text item. For access to the full text item, kindly consult the publisher's website.Light beams that carry orbital angular momentum are often approximated by modulating an initial beam, usually Gaussian, with an azimuthal phase variation to create a vortex beam. Such vortex beams are well defined azimuthally, but the radial profile is neglected in this generation approach. Here, we show that a consequence of this is that vortex beams carry very little energy in the desired zeroth radial order, as little as only a few percent of the incident power. We demonstrate this experimentally and illustrate how to overcome the problem by complex amplitude modulation of the incident field.enVortex beamsLight beamsOptical vorticesLiquid-crystal devicesArticleSephton, B. C., Dudley, A. L., & Forbes, A. (2016). Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9652Sephton, Bereneice C, Angela L Dudley, and A Forbes "Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams." (2016) http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9652Sephton BC, Dudley AL, Forbes A. Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams. 2016; http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9652.TY - Article AU - Sephton, Bereneice C AU - Dudley, Angela L AU - Forbes, A AB - Light beams that carry orbital angular momentum are often approximated by modulating an initial beam, usually Gaussian, with an azimuthal phase variation to create a vortex beam. Such vortex beams are well defined azimuthally, but the radial profile is neglected in this generation approach. Here, we show that a consequence of this is that vortex beams carry very little energy in the desired zeroth radial order, as little as only a few percent of the incident power. We demonstrate this experimentally and illustrate how to overcome the problem by complex amplitude modulation of the incident field. DA - 2016-10 DB - ResearchSpace DO - 10.1364/AO.55.007830 DP - CSIR KW - Vortex beams KW - Light beams KW - Optical vortices KW - Liquid-crystal devices LK - https://researchspace.csir.co.za PY - 2016 SM - 1559-128X T1 - Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams TI - Revealing the radial modes in vortex beams UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9652 ER -