Generation of cylindrical vector beams based on common-path interferometer with a vortex phase plate

Yansheng Liang; Shaohui Yan; Baoli Yao; Ming Lei; Junwei Min; Xianghua Yu

doi:10.1117/1.OE.55.4.046117

28 April 2016 Generation of cylindrical vector beams based on common-path interferometer with a vortex phase plate

Yansheng Liang, Shaohui Yan, Baoli Yao, Ming Lei, Junwei Min, Xianghua Yu

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 55, Issue 4, 046117 (April 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.55.4.046117

Abstract

Cylindrical vector (CV) beams have found increasing applications in physics, biology, and chemistry. To generate CV beams, interferometric technique is popularly adopted due to its flexibility. However, most interferometric configurations for the generation of CV beams are faced with system instability arising from external disturbance, limiting their practical applications. A common-path interferometer for the generation of radially and azimuthally polarized beams is proposed to improve the system stability. The optical configuration consists of a vortex phase plate acting to tailor the phase profile and a cube nonpolarizing beamsplitter to split the input beam into two components with mirror-like spiral phase distribution. The generated CV beams show a high quality in polarization and exhibit a better stability of beam profile than those obtained by noncommon-path interferometric configurations.

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Yansheng Liang, Shaohui Yan, Baoli Yao, Ming Lei, Junwei Min, and Xianghua Yu "Generation of cylindrical vector beams based on common-path interferometer with a vortex phase plate," Optical Engineering 55(4), 046117 (28 April 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.55.4.046117

Published: 28 April 2016

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