Polar POLICRYPS diffractive structures generate cylindrical vector beams

Journal Article · Mon Nov 16 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4935605· OSTI ID:22486072

Alj, Domenico; Caputo, Roberto; Umeton, Cesare ^[1]; Paladugu, Sathyanarayana ^[2]; Volpe, Giovanni ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and CNR-NANOTEC University of Calabria, I-87036 Rende (CS) (Italy)
2. Soft Matter Lab, Department of Physics, Bilkent University, Ankara 06800 (Turkey)

Local shaping of the polarization state of a light beam is appealing for a number of applications. This can be achieved by employing devices containing birefringent materials. In this article, we present one such enables converting a uniformly circularly polarized beam into a cylindrical vector beam (CVB). This device has been fabricated by exploiting the POLICRYPS (POlymer-LIquid CRYstals-Polymer-Slices) photocuring technique. It is a liquid-crystal-based optical diffraction grating featuring polar symmetry of the director alignment. We have characterized the resulting CVB profile and polarization for the cases of left and right circularly polarized incoming beams.

• OSTI ID: 22486072
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 20; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CYLINDRICAL CONFIGURATION
DIFFRACTION GRATINGS
INCOME
LIQUID CRYSTALS
POLARIZATION
POLARIZED BEAMS
POLYMERS
SYMMETRY
VECTORS
VISIBLE RADIATION