Optical vortices in the Ginzburg–Landau equation with cubic–quintic nonlinearity

In a dissipative system with cubic–quintic nonlinearity, the curious evolution of optical vortex beams characterized by different topological charges (TCs) is simulated numerically and presented their evolution profiles. We find that new vortices will be induced during propagation, and the behavior of vortices, as affected by the TC and the number of beads of the incident beam, as well as its size, is also discussed. Common rules associated with the initial conditions coming from various incident beams are developed to determine the number of induced vortices and the corresponding rotation direction. Attributed to the nonlinearity, during propagation we see the beams slowly expand to induce new vortices, which commonly appear in oppositely charged pairs, while the net topological charge of the vortex is conserved. Our results not only deepen the understanding of optical vortices, but also widen their potential applications.