title: Superposition of noncoaxial vortices in parametric wave mixing.
abstract: In this paper we present a comprehensive study of the dynamics of screw phase dislocations under conditions of noncoaxial parametric three-wave mixing in the pump low-depletion regime. Under such conditions the signal and idler fields couple and so, the fields' properties change through propagation in the nonlinear crystal. We present an analytical model and a comprehensive study of the vortical features of the resulting field. The model is compared with the numerical solutions of the full equations. It is shown that by changing the relative amplitude and phase of the initial fields, one can control the domains where creation and annihilation of vortex-antivortex twins lead to different vortex content. We show that the effects studied here are relevant to a variety of physical systems. In particular, we show that the same phenomena are expected to occur in gyrotropic media and photonic crystals.