Radially and azimuthally polarized non paraxial Bessel beams made simple

TL;DR

This paper introduces a straightforward method to generate exact nonparaxial Bessel beams with radial and azimuthal polarization by using Hertz vector potentials, enabling precise control of their spatial and polarization properties.

Contribution

The authors develop a simple, rigorous approach to produce nonparaxial Bessel beams with specific polarization states using Hertz vector potentials, extending the concept from paraxial to nonparaxial regimes.

Findings

Exact vector solutions for nonparaxial Bessel beams achieved

Spatial and polarization patterns similar to paraxial beams obtained

Potential applications in advanced optical systems discussed

Abstract

We present a method for the realization of radially and azimuthally polarized nonparaxial Bessel beams in a rigorous but simple manner. This result is achieved by using the concept of Hertz vector potential to generate exact vector solutions of Maxwell's equations from scalar Bessel beams. The scalar part of the Hertz potential is built by analogy with the paraxial case as a linear combination of Bessel beams carrying a unit of orbital angular momentum. In this way we are able to obtain spatial and polarization patterns analogous to the ones exhibited by the standard cylindrically polarized paraxial beams. Applications of these beams are discussed.