Arbitrary cylindrical vector beam generation enabled by polarization-selective Gouy phase shifter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a passive, polarization-selective device that simplifies the generation of arbitrary cylindrical vector beams by reversing topological charges via Gouy phase, eliminating complex interferometers.

Contribution

A novel polarization-selective Gouy phase shifter enables simple, tunable generation of arbitrary CVBs without interferometers, advancing optical technology applications.

Findings

Device successfully generates CVBs with arbitrary topological charges.

Simplifies CVB generation setup, reducing complexity and size.

Potential for integration into quantum and classical optical systems.

Abstract

Cylindrical vector beams (CVBs), which possesses polarization distribution of rotational symmetry on the transverse plane, can be developed in many optical technologies. Conventional methods to generate CVBs contain redundant interferometers or need to switch among diverse elements, thus being inconvenient in applications containing multiple CVBs. Here we provide a passive polarization-selective device to substitute interferometers and simplify generation setup. It is accomplished by reversing topological charges of orbital angular momentum based on polarization-selective Gouy phase. In the process, tunable input light is the only condition to generate CVB with arbitrary topological charges. To cover both azimuthal and radial parameters of CVBs, we express the mapping between scalar Laguerre-Gaussian light on basic Poincar\'e sphere and CVB on high-order Poincar\'e sphere. The proposed device simplifies the generation of CVBs enormously, and thus has potentials in integrated devices for both quantum and classic optical experiments.