Rapid fabrication of Spiral Varying Retarder for Using in Simple Schemes of Generating Radial and Azimuthal Vector Optical Fields

Abstract

In this paper, the simple, reliable and efficient fabrication technology of spiral varying retarder (SVR) on Iceland spar for generating radially and azimuthally polarized beams from linearly polarized Gaussian beam for λ = 632.8 nm is shown. The SVR which consists of 20 sectors was made by laser-induced microplasma processing on plate area of 10 × 10 mm 2 in less than 7 minutes. When placing the SVR between two quarter wave plates with orthogonal fast axes the registration of typical images of intensity distribution in the far field in four analyzer positions (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°) confirmed the SVR's ability to generate radially polarized vector optical field. It was also shown that the placing of a half-wave plate, the fast axis of which is oriented at 45°relative to the direction of x axis, allows to create an azimuthally polarized vector optical field.