Mie scattering of Laguerre-Gaussian beams: Photonic nanojets and near-field optical vortices

We study Mie scattering of Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) light beams remodelled using the method of far-field matching. The theoretical results are used to analyze the optical field in the near-field region for purely azimuthal LG beams characterized by a nonzero azimuthal mode number mLG. The morphology of photonic nanojets and the near-field structure of optical vortices associated with the components of the electric field are both found to be highly sensitive to the mode number mLG.