A study on the effects and visibility of low-order aberrations on laser beams with orbital angular momentum

Abstract

Laguerre–Gaussian-like laser beams have been proposed for driving experiments with high-intensity lasers. They carry orbital angular momentum and exhibit a ring-shaped intensity distribution in the far field which make them particularly attractive for various applications. We show experimentally and numerically that this donut-like shape is extremely sensitive to off-axis wavefront deformations. To support our claim, we generate a Laguerre–Gaussian-like laser beam and apply a selection of common low-order wavefront aberrations. We investigate the visibility of those wavefront deformations in the far field. Under use of established tolerance criteria, we determine the thresholds for the applied aberration and compare the findings with simulations for verification.