Study of singular phases in laser cavity modes

Study of singular phases is important for analyzing the wavefront deterioration of laser beams while propagating through strong atmospheric turbulence. Such study is useful to the applications involving the laser propagation and the phase detection systems. Few laser cavity modes inherently possess singular behavior. We report the study of detection of single and multiple phase singularities embedded in the fundamental laser mode. Numerically these vortices have been produced and two interferometric methods were used for the detection. Alternatively singularities could also be detected by measuring local slopes of wavefront employing Shack-Hartmann principle. Comparison of these methods was also discussed.