The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Structured High-Order but Single Laguerre–Gauss <i>LG</i>_<i>p</i>0 Laser Beams

Abstract

Most laser applications are based on the focusing of a Gaussian laser beam (GLB). When the latter is subject to a phase aberration such as the optical Kerr effect (OKE) or spherical aberration (SA), it is recognised that the focusing performance of the GLB is degraded. In this paper, it is demonstrated that high-order radial Laguerre–Gauss LGp0 beams are more resilient than the GLB when subject to the OKE or SA. This opens up opportunities to replace with advantages the usual GLB with a high-order LGp0 beam for some applications.

Keywords

• high-order Laguerre–Gauss modes
• rectified Laguerre–Gauss beams
• optical tweezers
• optical limiting
• optical Kerr effect