Polarization properties of Ince-Gaussian laser beams.

A consistent theoretical description of the polarization properties of Ince-Gauss (IG) laser beams is provided by constructing paraxial IG solutions to Maxwell equations. We confirm this description experimentally by recording both the dominant and cross-polarization components. Moreover, by experimentally confirming the evolution of the dominant and cross-polarization components as functions of ellipticity parameters, our paper extends further support to a unified treatment of the three (Laguerre-Gauss, Hermite-Gauss, and IG) families of paraxial laser beams.

Polarization properties of the Airy beam.

Polarization of paraxial Airy beam solutions of Maxwell's equations and its evolution with propagation have been studied. We experimentally demonstrate the existence of the cross-polarization component of the Airy beam, typical of nonplanar phase fronts, and study its evolution with propagation.

Poincaré-beam patterns produced by nonseparable superpositions of Laguerre-Gauss and polarization modes of light.

We present a study of Poincaré-beam polarization patterns produced by collinear superposition of two Laguerre-Gauss spatial modes in orthogonal polarization eigenstates (circular or linear). We explore theoretically and experimentally the combinations that are possible. We find that the resulting patterns can be explained in terms of mappings of points on the Poincaré sphere onto points in the transverse plane of the beam mode. The modes that we produced yielded many types of polarization singularities.