A succinct method to generate multi-type HCV beams with a spatial spiral varying retardation-plate

¹ Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences Hefei 230031, China
² Science Island Branch of Graduate School, University of Science and Technology of China - Hefei 230031, China
³ Institute of Applied Physics, Army Officer Academy - Hefei 230031, China
⁴ College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, National University of Defense Technology - Changsha, Hunan 410073, China

^(a) whwang@ipp.ac.cn
^(b) xjli@nudt.edu.cn

Received: 14 December 2017
Accepted: 10 April 2018

Abstract

A simple novel and practical scheme is presented to generate high-power cylindrical vector (HCV) beams with a 36-segment spiral varying retardation-plate sandwiched between two quarter-wave plates (QWPs). Four kinds of HCV beams, such as radially polarized beam and azimuthally polarized beam, are formed by simply rotating two QWPs. A segmented spiral varying phase-plate with isotropy is used to modulate spatial phase distribution to generate in-phase HCV beams. The intensity distributions and polarizing properties of HCV beams are investigated and analyzed in detail. It is demonstrated experimentally that the system can effectively generate multi-type HCV beams with high purity up to 99%, and it can be manufactured as cylindrical vector beam converter commercially.