Tailoring a complex perfect optical vortex array with multiple selective degrees of freedom

Optical vortex arrays (OVAs) have successfully aroused substantial interest from researchers for their promising prospects ranging from classical to quantum physics. Previous reported OVAs still show a lack of controllable dimensions which may hamper their applications. Taking an isolated perfect optical vortex (POV) as an array element, whose diameter is independent of its topological charge (TC), this paper proposes combined phase-only holograms to produce sophisticated POV arrays. The contributed scheme enables dynamically controllable multi-ring, TC, eccentricity, size, and the number of optical vortices (OVs). Apart from traditional single ring POV element, we set up a β_g library to obtain optimized double ring POV element. With multiple selective degrees of freedom to be chosen, a series of POV arrays are generated which not only elucidate versatility of the method but also unravel analytical relationships between the set parameters and intensity patterns. More exotic structures are formed like the “Bear POV” to manifest the potential of this approach in tailoring customized structure beams. The experimental results show robust firmness with the theoretical simulations. As yet, these arrays make their public debut so far as we know, and will find miscellaneous applications especially in multi-microparticle trapping, large-capacity optical communications, novel pumping lasers and so on.