Abstract

When a collimated light beam is passed consequently along the optic axes of two identical biaxial crystals, the conical refraction produces in the focal image plane a specific light pattern consisting of a ring and a central spot. The ring is formed due to the additive action of two crystals, while the spot results from the reversed conical refraction in such a degenerated cascade arrangement. The relative intensity of these two components depends on the azimuth angle between the orientations of the crystals about the beam axis. It is shown that this dependence arises due to the interference of pairs of waves produced by conical refraction in two crystals. If a part of these waves is blocked by polarization selection of beam components, the dependence of the light pattern on the azimuth angle vanishes. In this case, the outgoing light profile consists of a ring and a central spot with fixed intensities so that the total beam power is divided equally between these two components. Depending on the applied polarization, the central spot appears either as a restored input beam or a charge-two optical vortex. The results of numerical simulations of the effect are in a very good agreement with the experimental observations.

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