Rotating light fields of an azimuthally polarized light beam generated by two-belt spiral phase modulation

ABSTRACT

The tightly focused light fields of an azimuthally polarized light beam through a two-belt spiral phase plate were investigated. The focused light fields are presented in accordance with vectorial diffraction theory. The results show that a rotating light field with different intensity patterns can be produced by altering the azimuthal polarization state and modulating the two-belt spiral phase. A concurrent change in spiral handedness in the two-belt phase plate causes the rotation to occur along the direction of propagation, and the relative angular offset in the two-belt spiral phase plate can be exploited to rotate the light fields. The proposed method is useful for engineering the intensity distribution near the focal plane and related applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Diffraction
• azimuthal polarization
• spiral phase
• intensity distribution

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2017YFC0110303], [grant number 2016YFF0101400], the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) [grant number 2015CB352003], the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province [grant number LR16F050001], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2017FZA5004], the Henan Natural Science Foundation [grant number 182300410189], and the Henan Science and Technology Development Plan [grant number 172102210552], [grant number 182102310732].