Tailoring the Topological Charge of a Superposition of Identical Parallel Laguerre–Gaussian Beams

In optical computing machines, data can be transmitted by optical vortices, and the information can be encoded by their topological charges. Thus, some optical mechanisms are needed for performing simple arithmetic operations with the topological charges. Here, a superposition of several parallel identical Laguerre–Gaussian beams with single rings is studied. It is analytically and numerically shown that if the weighting coefficients of the superposition are real, then the total topological charge of the superposition is equal to the topological charge of each component in the initial plane and in the far field. We prove that the total topological charge of the superposition can be changed by the phase delay between the beams. In the numerical simulation, we demonstrate the incrementing and decrementing the topological charge. Potential application areas are in optical computing machines and optical data transmission.