Topological charge of optical vortices and their superpositions

An optical vortex passed through an arbitrary aperture (with the vortex center found within the aperture) or shifted from the optical axis of an arbitrary axisymmetric carrier beam is shown to conserve the integer topological charge (TC). If the beam contains a finite number of off-axis optical vortices with different TCs of the same sign, the resulting TC of the beam is shown to be equal to the sum of all constituent TCs. For a coaxial superposition of a finite number of the Laguerre-Gaussian modes (n, 0), the resulting TC equals that of the mode with the highest TC (including sign). If the highest positive and negative TCs of the constituent modes are equal in magnitude, then TC of the superposition is equal to that of the mode with the larger (in absolute value) weight coefficient. If both weight coefficients are the same, the resulting TC equals zero. For a coaxial superposition of two different-amplitude Gaussian vortices, the resulting TC equals that of the constituent vortex with the larger absolute value of the weight coefficient amplitude, irrespective of the relation between the individual TCs.