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Polarization evolution characteristics of focused hybridly polarized vector fields

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Abstract

We investigate the focusing property and the polarization evolution characteristics of hybridly polarized vector fields in the focal region. Three types of hybridly polarized vector fields, namely azimuthal-variant hybridly polarized vector field, radial-variant hybridly polarized vector field, and spatial-variant hybridly polarized vector field, are experimentally generated. The intensity distributions and the polarization evolution of these hybridly polarized vector fields focused under low numerical aperture (NA) are experimentally studied and good agreements with the numerical simulations are obtained. The three-dimensional (3D) state of polarization and the field distribution within the focal volume of these hybridly polarized vector fields under high-NA focusing are studied numerically. The optical curl force on Rayleigh particles induced by tightly focused hybridly polarized vector fields, which results in the orbital motion of trapped particles, is analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate that polarization-only modulation provided by the hybridly polarized vector field allows one to control both the intensity distribution and 3D elliptical polarization in the focal region, which may find interesting applications in particle trapping, manipulation, and orientation analysis.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant: 11174160) and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-10-0503).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Photonics Center, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Bing Gu, Yang Pan, Danfeng Xu & Yiping Cui

  2. Electro-Optics Program, University of Dayton, 300 College Park, Dayton, OH, 45469-2951, USA

    Guanghao Rui & Qiwen Zhan

Authors
  1. Bing Gu
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  2. Yang Pan
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  3. Guanghao Rui
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  4. Danfeng Xu
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  5. Qiwen Zhan
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  6. Yiping Cui
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Correspondence to Yiping Cui.

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Gu, B., Pan, Y., Rui, G. et al. Polarization evolution characteristics of focused hybridly polarized vector fields. Appl. Phys. B 117, 915–926 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-014-5909-8

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