Conical refraction healing after partially blocking the input beam

TL;DR

This study shows that conical refraction patterns and polarization states are remarkably resilient to partial obstructions of the input beam, with both theoretical and experimental evidence supporting this robustness.

Contribution

The paper provides the first combined theoretical and experimental analysis of how partial beam blocking affects conical refraction and polarization.

Findings

Conical refraction patterns are robust against partial beam obstruction.

The polarization state remains stable despite partial blocking.

The size of the obstacle influences the intensity pattern but not the polarization robustness.

Abstract

In conical refraction, when a focused Gaussian beam passes along one of the optic axes of a biaxial crystal it is transformed into a pair of concentric bright rings at the focal plane. We demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that this transformation is hardly affected by partially blocking the Gaussian input beam with an obstacle. We analyze the influence of the size of the obstruction both on the transverse intensity pattern of the beam and on its state of polarization, which is shown to be very robust.