Geometric phase associated with Poincar\'e beams due to unfolding of fractional optical vortex beams

Abstract

Optical vortex beam of fractional order is generated by the diffraction of a Gaussian beam using computer generated hologram embedded with mixed screw-edge dislocation. Unfolding of the generated fractional vortex beam into eigen-polarization components inside a birefringent crystal results in the conversion of scalar phase singularity to vector polarization singularities in the beam cross-section. The evolution of the singularities of the ellipse field namely C-points (points of undefined major axis) and L-lines (lines of undefined handedness) across the beam quantifies the transformation. The effect of the phase morphology dictated by the fractional order of the dislocation, transverse spatial separation and longitudinal relative phase of the two eigen-polarization components on determining the complex transverse polarization structure is investigated. The nature of the generated Poincar\'e beam is also indicated by projecting the states of polarization on to the Poincar\'e sphere. With increasing order of dislocation from 0.0 to 1.0 in fractional steps and increasing relative phase, the partial Poincar\'e beam is transformed to a full Poincar\'e beam. The transformation of the local structure around the C-points is measured through the geometric phase due to the Poincar\'e sphere contour around the C-points for different dynamic phase difference of the unfolded FOV beams. This study can be useful for different geometric phase based application of optical vortex beams.