Authors
Zhaoyang Wang, Yijie Shen, Darryl Naidoo, Xing Fu, Andrew Forbes
Publication date
2020/12/22
Journal
Optics Express
Volume
29
Issue
1
Pages
315-329
Publisher
Optical Society of America
Description
Structured light with more controllable degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) is an exciting topic with versatile applications. In contrast to conventional vector vortex beams (VVBs) with two DoFs of orbital angular momentum (OAM) and polarization, a hybrid ray-wave structure was recently proposed [Optica 7, 820 (2020)10.1364/OPTICA.382994], which simultaneously manifests multiple DoFs such as ray trajectory, coherent state phase, trajectory combination, besides OAM and polarization. Here we further generalize this exotic structure as the astigmatic hybrid VVB by hatching a new DoF of astigmatic degree. Importantly, the transverse topology varies with propagation, e.g. a linearly distributed hybrid trajectory pattern can topologically evolve to a circularly polygonal star shape, where the number of singularity changes from zero to multiple in a single beam. The propagation-dependent evolution can be easily controlled by …
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