A new family of paraxial laser beams that form an orthogonal basis is discussed. When propagated in uniform space, these beams preserve their structure to scale. The intensity distribution profile for such beams is similar to that for the Bessel modes, representing a set of alternating bright and dark concentric rings. The complex amplitude of these beams is proportional to the degenerate (confluent) hypergeometric function, and therefore we term such beams hypergeometric (HyG) modes. The HyG modes are generated with a liquid-crystal microdisplay.

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We propose a three-parameter family of asymmetric Bessel-Gauss (aBG) beams with integer and fractional orbital angular momentum (OAM). The aBG beams are described by the product of a Gaussian function by the nth-order Bessel function of the first kind of complex argument, having finite energy. The aBG beam's asymmetry degree depends on a real parameter c≥0: at c=0, the aBG beam is coincident with a conventional radially symmetric Bessel-Gauss (BG) beam; with increasing c, the aBG beam acquires a semicrescent shape, then becoming elongated along the y axis and shifting along the x axis for c≫1. In the initial plane, the intensity distribution of the aBG beams has a countable number of isolated optical nulls on the x axis, which result in optical vortices with unit topological charge and opposite signs on the different sides of the origin. As the aBG beam propagates, the vortex centers undergo a nonuniform rotation with the entire beam about the optical axis (c≫1), making a π/4 turn at the Rayleigh range and another π/4 turn after traveling the remaining distance. At different values of the c parameter, the optical nulls of the transverse intensity distribution change their position, thus changing the OAM that the beam carries. An isolated optical null on the optical axis generates an optical vortex with topological charge n. A vortex laser beam shaped as a rotating semicrescent has been generated using a spatial light modulator.

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