Analytical investigation of optical vortices emitted from a collectively polarized dipole array

Many approaches for producing optical vortices have been developed both for fundamental interests of science and for engineering applications. In particular, the approach with direct excitation of several emitters has a potential to control the topological charges with a control of the source conditions without any modifications of structures of the system. In this paper, we investigate the propagation properties of the optical vortices emitted from a collectively polarized electric dipole array as a simple model of the several emitters. Using an analytical approach based on the Jacobi-Anger expansion, we derive a relationship between the topological charge of the optical vortices and the source conditions of the emitter, and clarify and report our new finding; there exists an intrinsic split of the singular points in the electric field due to the spin-orbit interaction of the dipole fields. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America