Encoding high-order cylindrically polarized light beams

Abstract

In this work we present a setup for the experimental production of cylindrically polarized beams, as well as other variations of polarized light beams. The optical system uses a single transmissive phase-only spatial light modulator, which is used to apply different spatial phase modulation to two output collinear R and L circularly polarized components. Different cylindrically polarized light beams can be obtained by applying different phase shifts to these two circularly polarized components. The system is very efficient since modulation is directly applied to the light beam (as opposed to other common methods operating in the first order of encoded diffraction gratings). Different variations to the cylindrically polarized light beams are also reported, obtained by adding linear or quadratic relative phase shifts between the two circular polarization components of the light beam. Experimental results are provided in all cases.

Generation of integer and fractional vector beams with q-plates encoded onto a spatial light modulator

“…In this case, the spiral phases are adjusted to generate the radial polarized beam. These results agree with previous reports [17]. In particular, we see that the direction of the linearly polarized output follows the orientation of the analyzer.…”

“…In addition when detecting the circular components, we see the size of the center singularity becomes larger as the topological charge increases. Note that these kinds of intensity patterns have been reported earlier [17]. But the novelty here is that we generate them by encoding arbitrary q-plates in the SLM system.…”

“…(1), we added QWP1 at the input, and QWP3 and HWP at the output from the NPBS. Note that a related system was employed earlier to generate radial and azimuthal polarization [17]. However, including the initial QWP and the final HWP allow the exact reproduction of the q-plate in Eq.…”

Monstar polarization singularities with elliptically-symmetric q-plates

“…They have emerged as avenues to explore fundamental optical spaces [4], the study of topological disclinations [5], and their use as means to encode quantum information [6,7]. In this article we focus on topological disclinations [8], which can be encoded in the polarization of the light [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…For example, lemons with I C = +1/2 and stars with I C = −1/2 have one and three radial lines, respectively [8]. The symmetric patterns of lemons and stars have been studied extensively for low and high indices by numerous means: sub-wavelength structures [15,22], stress birefringence [17], superposition [16,18,20,21,23,24] and q-plates [19,25,26].…”