Exploiting cellophane birefringence to generate radially and azimuthally polarised vector beams

Johnston Kalwe1, 2, Martin Neugebauer2,3, Calvine Ominde1, Gerd Leuchs2,3,4, Geoffrey Rurimo1 and Peter Banzer2,3,4

dc.contributor.author	Johnston Kalwe1, 2, Martin Neugebauer2,3, Calvine Ominde1, Gerd Leuchs2,3,4, Geoffrey Rurimo1 and Peter Banzer2,3,4
dc.date.accessioned	2015-05-28T11:16:32Z
dc.date.available	2015-05-28T11:16:32Z
dc.date.issued	2015-02-04
dc.identifier.citation	European Journal of Physics Eur. J. Phys. 36 (2015) 025011 (8pp) doi:10.1088/0143-0807/36/2/025011	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	European Journal of Physics Eur. J. Phys. 36 (2015) 025011 (8pp) doi:10.1088/0143-0807/36/2/025011
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/1622
dc.description	1 Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology, Department of Physics, PO Box 62000-00200, Nairobi, Kenya 2 Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Guenther-Scharowsky-Str. 1, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany 3 Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, Department of Physics, Friedrich Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Staudtstr. 7/B2, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany 4 Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, 25 Templeton, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5 Canada	en_US
dc.description.abstract	5 Abstract We exploit the birefringence of cellophane to convert a linearly polarised Gaussian beam into either a radially or azimuthally polarised beam. For that, we fabricated a low-cost polarisation mask consisting of four segments of cellophane. The fast axis of each segment is oriented appropriately in order to rotate the polarisation of the incident linearly polarised beam as desired. To ensure the correct operation of the polarisation mask, we tested the polarisation state of the generated beam by measuring the spatial distribution of the Stokes parameters. Such a device is very cost efficient and allows for the generation of cylindrical vector beams of high quality.	en_US
dc.description.sponsorship	Maxplank Instiute JKUAT DAAD	en_US
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.publisher	European Journal of Physics	en_US
dc.relation.ispartofseries	36;025011
dc.subject	polarisation mask, cellophane, birefringence, radial, azimuthal	en_US
dc.title	Exploiting cellophane birefringence to generate radially and azimuthally polarised vector beams	en_US
dc.type	Article	en_US