Observation of topological transformations of optical vortices in two-dimensional photonic lattices

We study interaction of a discrete vortex with a supporting photonic lattice and analyze how the combined action of the lattice periodicity and the medium nonlinearity can modify the vortex structure. In particular, we describe theoretically and observe in experiment, for the first time to our knowledge, the nontrivial topological transformations of the discrete vortex including the flipping of vortex charge and inversion of its orbital angular momentum. We also demonstrate the stabilizing effect of the interaction with the so-called "mixed" optically-induced photonic lattices on the vortex propagation and topological structure. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America