Exploiting cellophane birefringence to generate radially and azimuthally polarised vector beams

Publisher: IOP Publishing

E-ISSN: 1361-6404|36|2|25011-25018

ISSN: 0143-0807

Source: European Journal of Physics, Vol.36, Iss.2, 2015-03, pp. : 25011-25018

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

We exploit the birefringence of cellophane to convert a linearly polarised Gaussian beam into either a radially or azimuthally polarised beam. For that, we fabricated a low-cost polarisation mask consisting of four segments of cellophane. The fast axis of each segment is oriented appropriately in order to rotate the polarisation of the incident linearly polarised beam as desired. To ensure the correct operation of the polarisation mask, we tested the polarisation state of the generated beam by measuring the spatial distribution of the Stokes parameters. Such a device is very cost efficient and allows for the generation of cylindrical vector beams of high quality.

Related content