Generation of light beams with custom orbital angular momentum and tunable transverse intensity symmetries

Abstract: We introduce a novel and simple modulation technique to tailor optical beams with a customized amount of orbital angular momentum (OAM). The technique is based on the modulation of the angular spectrum of a seed beam, which allows us to specify in an independent manner the value of OAM and the shape of the resulting beam transverse intensity. We experimentally demonstrate our method by arbitrarily shaping the radial and angular intensity distributions of Bessel and Laguerre-Gauss beams, while their OAM value remains constant. Our experimental results agree with the numerical and theoretical predictions.