Generating a couple of rotating nondiffracting beams using a binary-phase DOE

A binary-phase diffractive optical element (DOE) is utilized to generate a couple of identical oppositely rotating (in a clockwise and counterclockwise direction) nondiffracting light beams. The diffraction-free character of beam propagation is conserved up to a certain distance depending on the aperture radius and on local characteristics of the DOE. Either of the beams is described by a linear combination of Bessel functions of the first kind and of different orders and scale, multiplied by relevant angular harmonics. Theory and experiment are shown to be in good agreement.