Scalar vortex beam produced through faithful reconstruction of polarization holography

Abstract

Vortex beams have been widely analyzed and applied in various fields owing to their unique phase and intensity distribution, along with their orbital angular momentum; they can be produced through various methods. This study proposes a method based on polarization holography, contrary to the traditional method of producing vortex beams. This method is significant in that the signal wave in the recording stage is not the generated vortex beam; the reconstructed wave is the vortex beam obtained in the reconstruction stage, which varies from the vortex beams produced by holography, where the signal wave is already a vortex beam. Faithful reconstruction of polarization holography is applied in the experiment, where phenanthrenequinone-doped polymethyl methacrylate (PQ/PMMA) photopolymers are used as the recording material. Scalar vortex beams with arbitrary linear polarization and topological charges can be produced by changing the experimental parameters. The experimental results are satisfactory. Additionally, this work demonstrates the application of polarization holography in light field manipulation. This proposed method has potential applications in optical micro-manipulation and optical tweezers.

Phenanthraquinone-Doped Polymethyl Methacrylate Photopolymer for Holographic Recording

“…Polarization holography adds the polarization information of light as a modulation dimension to the holographic storage, which can increase the information storage density. As per research in recent years [ 66 ], polarization holography is a good candidate to replace the existing micro–nano technology [ 67 ], for the manufacture of light field control elements [ 68 , 69 ], and for the manufacture of metamaterials [ 70 ]. The polarization characteristics of the PQ/PMMA photopolymer originate from the optical anisotropy within the material, and we will describe its measurement optical path in detail in Section 7 .…”

Effect of some experimental parameters on initial exposure response coefficient in linear polarization holography

“…Compared with conventional holography, polarization holography can simultaneously record the amplitude, [1][2][3][4] phase, and polarization state of signal waves. Polarization holography extends the applied range of holography because it has the ability to record all information of the light field and provides new ideas for holographic data storage, [5][6][7] optical field manipulations, 8,9 and preparation of polarized optical elements, 10 as well as forreplacing the existing micro-nano technology 11 and metamaterials. 12 Previous researchers have developed the polarization holography theory based on the paraxial approximation.…”

Bifocal-polarization holographic lens made from volume hologram

“…By introducing the polarization characteristics into conventional holography, more degrees of freedom can be provided to control the optical information [21,22] . In recent years, with the development of tensor polarization holography theory, it is possible to use polarization holography to manufacture polarization elements, such as circular polarized wave generator [23] , vortex light field generator [24][25][26] , Stokes parameter detection grating [27] , etc. By comparing these studies, we find that compared with the production of metasurface lens, it is relatively simple to make polarization elements through polarization holography, and has a very low cost.…”