Statistics of diffusive and localized fields in the vortex core

The statistics of the field structure in the vortex core surrounding phase singularities in random wave fields are measured and calculated for diffusive and localized waves. Excellent agreement is found between experiment and theory. The variation of phase with geometric angle is deterministic, depending only upon the eccentricity of elliptical intensity contours, whose probability distribution is shown to be universal. The distribution of vorticity is shown to reflect both the vorticity distribution in the Gaussian limit and the mesoscopic distribution of total transmission.