Elliptic Laguerre-Gaussian beams

An analytical expression for the diffraction of an elliptic Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam is derived and analyzed. We show that a beam with even singularity order has nonzero axial intensity for any degree of ellipticity and at any finite distance z from the initial plane, whereas at z = 0 and z = infinity the axial intensity is zero. We show that for a beam with a small degree of ellipticity and even order of singularity, two isolated intensity zeroes appear in the Fresnel zone on a straight line at an angle of 45 deg or -45 deg, depending whether the beam's spin is right or left. The theoretical conclusions are confirmed by numerical simulation and physical experiments. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.