Creation of cylindrical vector beams through highly anisotropic scattering media with a single scalar transmission matrix calibration

Abstract

Cylindrical vector (CV) beams have attracted increasing interest due to their particular properties and their applications in optical imaging, optical manipulation, and light–matter interactions. However, it is challenging to construct CV beams through highly anisotropic scattering media (HASM), such as thick biological tissue, posing a barrier to the applications of CV beams that involve HASM. Here, we present a scheme to construct CV beams beyond high scattering that only requires a single scalar transmission matrix (TM) calibration and manipulation of the spatial degrees of freedom of the scalar input field. Assisted by a radial polarization converter (S-waveplate) and a polarizer, the scheme enables one to obtain the correct incident wavefront for the creation of CV beams through HASM with only one single scalar TM calibration. Compared to the existing method, this user-friendly approach is fast and simple in terms of the optical implements and computations. Both radially and azimuthally polarized beams are experimentally constructed through a ZnO scattering layer to demonstrate the viability of the method. Arbitrarily generalized CV beams and arrays of CV beams are also created through the HASM to further prove the flexibility of the method. We believe this work may pave the way for applications of CV beams that involve a highly anisotropic scattering environment.