Related papers: Light beams with general direction and polarizatio…
Spatial field correlation functions represent a key quantity for the description of mesoscopic phenomena in disordered media and the optical characterization of complex materials. Yet many aspects related to the vector nature of light waves…
We present a convenient method to generate vector beams of light having polarization singularities on their axis, via partial spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in a suitably patterned liquid crystal cell. The resulting…
The geometric phase is usually treated as a quantity modulo 2\pi, a convention carried over from early work on the subject. The results of a series of optical interference experiments involving polarization of light, done by the present…
The Poincar\'e sphere is a graphical representation in a three-dimensional space for the polarization of light. Similarly, an optical element with spatially varying birefringence can be represented by a surface on a four-dimensional…
The simple reflection of a light beam of finite transverse extent from a homogenous interface gives rise to a surprisingly large number of subtle shifts and deflections which can be seen as diffractive corrections to the laws of geometrical…
We show that any pure, two-mode, $N$-photon state with $N$ odd or equal to two can be transformed into an orthogonal state using only linear optics. According to a recently suggested definition of polarization degree, this implies that all…
We develop a systematic framework for constructing spherical harmonics on the two-dimensional unit sphere as superpositions of Gaussian beams whose poles form well-separated point configurations. The distributional and analytic properties…
We demonstrate a polarimetry technique based on geometric phase measurements. The technique can be used to obtain either the polarization state of a light beam or the properties of a polarizing optical system. On the one hand, we apply our…
Control of the phase and polarization states of light is an important goal for nearly all optical research. The development of an efficient optical component that allows the simultaneous manipulation of the polarization and phase…
Within the curl-curl type vector equation describing a monochromatic light wave in a focusing Kerr medium, the transverse structure of extremely narrow, linearly polarized self-focused optical beams is found numerically with a high…
Polarization of light beams is one of the most important physical phenomena. But up till now it was only described in the paraxial approximation in which it is considered to be a single degree of freedom that is characterized by the local…
The on-demand tailoring of light's spatial shape is of great relevance in a wide variety of research areas. Computer-controlled devices, such as Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) or Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs), offer a very accurate,…
The fundamental polarization singularities of monochromatic light are normally associated with invariance under coordinated rotations: symmetry operations that rotate the spatial dependence of an electromagnetic field by an angle $\theta$…
Recent reports on the intriguing features of vector vortex bearing beams are analyzed using geometric phases in optics. It is argued that the spin redirection phase induced circular birefringence is the origin of topological phase…
An analysis of the matrix models representing the polarimetric properties of light and material media is carried out by using the concept of the coherency matrix, which leads to the identification and definition of their corresponding…
We present a generalized Poincar\'e sphere (G sphere) and generalized Stokes parameters (G parameters), as a geometric representation, which unifies the descriptors of a variety of vector fields. Unlike the standard Poincar\'e sphere, the…
We consider the polarization arising from scattering in an envelope illuminated by a central anisotropic source. Spherical harmonics are used to describe both the light source anisotropy and the envelope density distribution functions of…
Stokes parameters (${\bf S}$) in Poincar\'e sphere are very useful values to describe the polarisation state of photons. However, the fundamental principle of the nature of polarisation is not completely understood, yet, because we have no…
We construct optical beams in free space with robust skyrmionic structures in their polarization fields, both in the electric spin vector for near-circular fields and in the polarization direction for near-linear fields, and for both Bloch…
Full Poincar\'e (FP) beams, a special class of fully correlated beams generated through the coaxial superposition of a Laguerre-Gauss and fundamental Gaussian modes of orthogonal polarizations, contain all possible polarization states on…