POLICRYPS to Generate Cylindrical Vector Beams published in Appl. Phys. Lett.

Polar POLICRYPS diffractive structures generate cylindrical vector beams

Polar POLICRYPS diffractive structures generate cylindrical vector beams
Domenico Alj, Sathyanarayana Paladugu, Giovanni Volpe, Roberto Caputo & Cesare Umeton
Applied Physics Letter 107(20), 201101 (2015)
DOI: 10.1063/1.4935605
arXiv: 1509.07671

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.