Production of azimuthally polarized beam with helical phase by use of the axicons and annular glass cylinder.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we proposed a method for producing the azimuthally polarized vector beam experimentally. The experimental setup includes two of the same axicons and one annular glass cylinder. The top angles of the two axicons were placed facing each other and the annular cylinder was set among the two axicons. One circular polarized beam was passed through the first axicon, the annular cylinder, and the second axicon in turn. When the beam incident on the inner surface of the annular cylindrical satisfied the Brewster angle, we obtained the azimuthally polarized beam for the reflected light from the annular cylindrical that only contains the $s$s-polarization component. We have derived that the azimuthally polarized vector beam has the helical phase factor with the helical phase factor of ${\exp}( - {\rm i}\varphi )$exp(-iφ) for the left circularly polarized beam incident and ${\exp}({\rm i}\varphi )$exp(iφ) for the right circularly polarized beam incident.