Extraordinary Spin specific beam shift of Light in an Inhomogeneous Anisotropic medium

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a large, tunable, spin-specific beam shift of light in an inhomogeneous anisotropic medium, driven by spatially varying phases, with potential for spin-optical device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to achieve and control spin-specific beam shifts using spatially varying geometric and dynamical phases in anisotropic media.

Findings

Achieved large, tunable spin-specific beam shifts.

Demonstrated control over the magnitude and direction of the shift.

Showed potential for developing spin-optical devices.

Abstract

Spin orbit interaction and the resulting Spin Hall effect of light are under recent intensive investigations because of their fundamental nature and potential applications. Here, we report an extraordinary spin specific beam shift of light and demonstrate its tunability in an inhomogeneous anisotropic medium exhibiting spatially varying retardance level. The spin specificity (shift occurs only for one circular polarization mode, keeping the other orthogonal mode unaffected) is shown to arise due to the combined spatial gradients of the geometric phase and the dynamical phase of light. The constituent two orthogonal circular polarization modes of an input linearly polarized light evolve in different trajectories, eventually manifesting as a large and tunable spin separation. The spin specificity of the beam shift and the demonstrated principle of simultaneously tailoring space-varying geometric and dynamical phase of light for achieving its tunability (of both magnitude and direction), may provide an attractive route towards development of spin-optical devices.