Holonomically constrained polarization transformation

TL;DR

This paper explores holonomically constrained polarization transformations in topological polarization optics, introducing a topological index space and analyzing conditions for holonomic transformations in structured polarization beams.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of holonomically constrained polarization transformations and develops a topological framework for classifying polarization transformations in structured beams.

Findings

Conditions for holonomic polarization transformations are detailed.

Topological index spaces for polarization optics are proposed.

Differentiation between holonomic and nonholonomic transformations is clarified.

Abstract

In polarization optics, various topological constructs, namely Poincar\'e spheres of different orders, are used to represent uniform and structured polarization distributions. Similarly, there are also structured polarization optical elements. Consequently, various topological indices are defined for structured beams and elements. These topological aspects naturally allow us to holonomy-based categorization of polarization transformations. In this paper, we introduce holonomically constrained polarization transformations on topological constructs. The conditions on the topological parameters of the beams, elements and spheres to achieve holonomically constrained polarization transformations are discussed in detail. A topological treatment of holonomic systems is needed, since abundant polarization transformations reported in the literature on beams with structured polarization are nonholonomic. It is prudent to carry out this study since it can not be assumed that switching between holonomic and nonholonomic transformations does not affect the system output. It is shown here how these concepts enable us to introduce topological index spaces for polarization optics.