Spin-Hall effect and circular birefringence of a uniaxial crystal plate

Abstract

The linear birefringence of uniaxial crystal plates is known since the 17 th century, and it is widely used in numerous optical setups and devices. Here we demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, a fine lateral circular birefringence of such crystal plates. This effect is a novel example of the spin-Hall effect of light, i.e., a transverse spin-dependent shift of the paraxial light beam transmitted through the plate. The well-known linear birefringence and the new circular birefringence form an interesting analogy with the Goos-Hänchen and Imbert-Fedorov beam shifts that appear in the light reflection at a dielectric interface. We report the experimental observation of the effect in a remarkably simple system of a tilted half-wave plate and polarizers using polarimetric and quantum-weak-measurement techniques for the beam-shift measurements. In view of great recent interest in spin-orbit interaction phenomena, our results could find applications in modern polarization optics and nano-photonics.

Recent advances in the spin Hall effect of light

“…The SHE of light in many other interfaces, such as anisotropic crystals [87,88], semiconductors [89,90], metals [64,91], metamaterials/metasurfaces [92][93][94][95][96], multilayered dielectric films [45,82,97], 2D material films [63,98] and photon tunneling structures [99,100], has also been which is boosted by a large factor A w in a weak measurement procedure [28]. Right panel: measured results for the spin Hall shifts (maximum ~ λ/10) with respect to the incident angle θ.…”

Generalized Spatial Differentiation from the Spin Hall Effect of Light and Its Application in Image Processing of Edge Detection

“…Although the resulting spatial differentiation seems counterintuitive to the common knowledge that no light can pass through two orthogonal polarizers, we show that the spatial differentiation is intrinsically due to the SHE of light and occurs at any planar interface, regardless of material composition or incident angles. Here, our theoretical and experimental works fill the gap from observing a few specific cases [15,16,18,29] to confirming generalized optical computing.…”

“…We note that, currently, extensive investigations of the SHE of light are focused on analyzing nonorthogonal polarization states between incident and reflected (refracted) light in order to realize weak measurement. A few studies are involved in orthogonal polarization analysis, which creates a profoundly different output beam profile from the original one [15,16,18,29]. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate that under paraxial approximation, by analyzing specific orthogonal polarization states, the beam profiles reflected and refracted at a single optical planar interface correspond to spatial differentiation of incident field.…”

“…Goos-Hänchen shift [10,11] and the Pancharatnam-Berry phase [12]. Also, they boost up experimental investigations of SHE of light in a variety of different optical systems [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and the other general spin-dependent transportation phenomena [24][25][26][27][28]. In particular, Hosten and Kwiat identified the connection between the optical SHE of photons and classical light and proposed the "weak measurement" method for attaining ultrahigh sensitivity to angstrom-scale displacements [13].…”

Interplay between diffraction and the Pancharatnam-Berry phase in inhomogeneously twisted anisotropic media

“…Discrepancy arises from the fact that the Kapitza model, elaborated in Ref. [37] for the scalar case, does not account for the complete spin-orbit interaction occurring in this case [52].…”