Review on vortex beams with low spatial coherence

Abstract

Vortex beams with helical phase, carrying phase singularity and orbital angular momentum, have attract great attention in the past decades due to their wide applications in optical communications, optical manipulation, super-resolution imaging and so on. Vortex beams with low spatial coherence, i.e. partially coherent vortex beams, carrying correlation singularity, display some unique properties during propagation, e.g. self-shaping, self-splitting and self-reconstruction. Partially coherent vortex beams exhibit some advantages over coherent vortex beams in some applications, such as remote sensing, laser radar and free-space optical communications. This review summarizes research progress on partially coherent vortex beams, including theoretical models, propagation properties, generation and topological charge determination.