Fiber Polarization Mode Excitation Applied to Confocal Microscopy

Abstract

Creating and controlling complex laser polarization patterns has become essential for many areas of optics. In particular, radially and azimuthally polarized doughnut beams (also known as cylindrical vector beams, CVBs) were used widely, for example, to study the shape and orientation of individual nano-objects such as molecules or metal nano-particles (NPs), for particle trapping, for high-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy, and for the excitation of radially symmetric plasmonic structures, like in tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy.