Single-shot generation of composite optical vortex beams using hybrid binary fork gratings

We design and experimentally demonstrate a simple, single-shot method for the generation of arbitrary composite vortex (CV) beams using hybrid binary fork gratings (hBFG). These gratings were computationally generated by removing the central region around the fork-dislocation of azimuthal charge ℓ 1 and substituting it with a BFG of a different charge ℓ 2 . The geometrical parameters of hBFGs were optimized for the efficient generation of CV beams. The method was further extended to the generation of CV beams consisting of three different ℓ and of higher radial charges p. This simple generation method may be useful to generate complex beam shapes with engineered phase fronts without complicated interferometry based techniques.