Transverse modes of light have been widely exploited in both classical and quantum optics in recent years. Among the devices to manipulate the transverse modes of light, a π/2 converter is a fundamental and important one that analogs to the quarter-wave plate in the polarization degree of freedom. While a π/2 converter is typically achieved by a pair of well-adjusted cylindrical lenses, it suffers from complexity in its installation and adjustment, which strongly limits its practical applications. In this paper an integrated design of a π/2 converter is reported. We compute the necessary parameters for manufacturing according to refractive theory of a cylindrical surface. Based on the change of refractive indices, we simulate the response of Gouy phase versus wavelengths. We also implement an experiment to verify the conversion between Laguerre-Gaussian modes and Hermite-Gaussian modes by using our compact π/2 converter to confirm its simple adjustment and reliable performance in practice.

Cylindrical vector beams (CVBs), which possess polarization distribution of rotational symmetry on the transverse plane, can be developed in many optical technologies. Conventional methods to generate CVBs contain redundant interferometers or need to switch among diverse elements, thus being inconvenient in applications containing multiple CVBs. Here we provide a passive polarization-selective device to substitute interferometers and simplify generation setup. It is accomplished by reversing topological charges of orbital angular momentum based on a polarization-selective Gouy phase. In the process, tunable input light is the only condition to generate a CVB with arbitrary topological charges. To cover both azimuthal and radial parameters of CVBs, we express the mapping between scalar Laguerre–Gaussian light on a basic Poincaré sphere and CVB on a high-order Poincaré sphere. The proposed device simplifies the generation of CVBs enormously and thus has potential in integrated devices for both quantum and classic optical experiments.

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