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Using the Richards-Wolf formulas for an arbitrary circularly polarized optical vortex with an integer topological charge m, we obtain explicit expressions for all components of the electric and magnetic field strength vectors near the focus, as well as expressions for the intensity (energy density) and for the energy flux (components of the Poynting vector) in the focal plane of an aplanatic optical system. For m=2, from the obtained expressions it follows that the energy flux near the optical axis propagates in the reversed direction, rotating along a spiral around the optical axis. On the optical axis itself, the reversed flux is maximal and decays rapidly with the distance from the axis. For m=3, in contrast, the reversed energy flux in the focal plane is minimal (zero) on the optical axis and increases (until the first ring of the light intensity) as a squared distance from the axis.

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An expression to describe the complex amplitude of a family of paraxial hypergeometric laser beams propagating in a parabolic-index fiber is proposed. A particular case of a Gaussian optical vortex propagating in a parabolic-index fiber is studied. Under definite parameters, the Gaussian optical vortices become the modes of the medium. This is a new family of paraxial modes derived for the parabolic-index medium. A wide class of solutions of nonparaxial Helmholtz equations that describe modes in a parabolic refractive index medium is derived in the cylindrical coordinate system. As the solutions derived are proportional to Kummer’s functions, only those of them which are coincident with the nonparaxial Laguerre–Gaussian modes possess a finite energy, meaning that they are physically implementable. A definite length of the graded-index fiber is treated as a parabolic lens, and expressions for the numerical aperture and the focal spot size are deduced. An explicit expression for the radii of the rings of a binary lens approximating a parabolic-index lens is derived. Finite-difference time-domain simulation has shown that using a binary parabolic-index microlens with a refractive index of 1.5, a linearly polarized Gaussian beam can be focused into an elliptic focal spot which is almost devoid of side-lobes and has a smaller full width at half maximum diameter of 0.45 of the incident wavelength.