This book focuses on optical vortices, including beams carrying orbital angular momentum and vector beams. It presents an overview of, and the latest research on this novel type of optical beam, which is a hot topic in the domain of modern optics, especially in optical communication and beam manipulation.

Summarizing the fundamentals of optical vortices, it discusses their characterization and propagation, and focuses on the generation of vortices such as vortex-arrays, and the detection of vortices and their orbital angular momentum state. It also comprehensively examines the adaptive compensation systems, as well as vector beams and polarization vortices with anisotropic polarization distributions. Further it provides a detailed description of perfect vortices with beam diameters independent of the angular momentum. This book is intended for researchers, engineers and graduate students working in the field of optics and laser beam applications.