Control of the orbital angular momentum via radial numbers of structured Laguerre–Gaussian beams

Abstract

We found that the internal perturbations of the structured Laguerre–Gaussian beam in the form of two-parametric harmonic excitations of the Hermite–Gaussian (HG) modes in its composition mix up the radial and azimuthal numbers. The harmonic excitation is characterized by two parameters, one of them controls the amplitude of the HG modes, and the second parameter controls the phases of each HG mode. It was revealed that this mixing of the beam quantum numbers leads to the possibility of controlling the orbital angular momentum (OAM) by means of radial numbers. Non-zero radial numbers lead to rapid OAM oscillations as the phase parameter changes, while oscillations disappear if the radial number is zero. We have also shown that the variation of the phase parameter in a wide range of values does not change the modulus of the total topological charge of the structured beam, despite the fast OAM oscillations.