Generation and double-slit interference of higher-order vector beams

Abstract

A method for generating vector beams with higher-order states of polarization based on a setup with a one phase-only liquid crystal spatial light modulator is proposed. The polarization properties and double-slit interference of the higher-order vector beams were investigated in detail. The cross section intensity distributions were flower-like for higher-order vector beams when passing through a linear polarizer. Misplacements appeared in the double-slit interference fringes, which divided each fringe into several discrete parts, i.e., 2P-1 for P≥2, and 3 for P=1, where P is the polarization order number. When associated with optical petal orientations analysis of the beam spots behind a linear polarizer, the double-slit interference can be used to detect and analyze higher-order vector beams.

Flexible Method for Generating Arbitrary Vector Beams Based on Modified Off-Axis Interference-Type Hologram Encoding

“…Although these approaches are conducive to generating vector beams, they all share a common disadvantage of being inflexible and dynamic about the configurations and optics they are designed for. Therefore, light field modulation technology came into being, which is based on liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. LC-SLM can control the amplitude and phase in real time, and a new spatially structured light field with arbitrary complex amplitude and polarization distribution can be generated.…”

Efficient generation and tight focusing of radially polarized beam from linearly polarized beam with all-dielectric metasurface

“…Especially, the strong longitudinal electric field component is of existence at the focus of radially polarized (RP) beam [4], leading to a sharper focal spot than a homogeneously polarized beam [5,6], which results in many significant applications in high-resolution microscopy [7], surface plasmon excitation [8], particles accelerating [9], material processing [10,11], and so on. Typically, some traditional methods, such as radial or azimuthal polarization converter [5,6], segmented waveplates [12], segmented spiral varying retarder [13], circular grating coupler [14], internal conical diffraction [15], and spatial light modulators [16,17], have been utilized to generate radially or azimuthally polarized (AP) light. However, the methods mentioned above are somewhat bulky, unstable, or low efficiency.…”

Generation of cylindrical and elliptical symmetrical vector beam on the Mach–Zehnder interferometer

“…27 Liao et al used the SLM to generate vector beams with higher-order states of polarization. 28 Wen et al proposed a novel interferometric approach to generate arbitrary CVBs on the higher order Poincaré sphere. 29 The arbitrary complex vector beams were generated by Wang et al with Double-channel vector SLM.…”