Chapter 2: Vector Optical Fields and Their Novel Effects

Abstract

In this chapter, the concept of vector optical fields is briefly introduced at first. Then we secondly introduce our method for generating vector optical fields based on the Poincaré sphere and wavefront reconstruction is presented. Novel effects arising from these vector optical fields, including the optical cage, the splitting caused by the axial-symmetry breaking, the Young's two-slit interference, and the optical orbital angular momentum will be reported followed by a brief summary of our findings.