Vectorial wavefront shaping to obscure nodal surfaces (in bottle beams)

Often beams, such as optical bottle beams (OBBs), possess rotational asymmetry, or other defects in the beam's intensity distribution. These beams are often due to nodal surfaces formed by the discontinuous phases which are typically necessary for the beam's unique intensity distribution. But must this always be the case? We use a combination of computational modeling with novel phase retrieval techniques and polarization-dependent vector wavefront shaping to explore the creation of computer-generated holographic beams. We discuss how to apply this method to creating obscured beams, such as uniformly enclosed optical bottle beams. and the properties these types of beams possess.