Diffraction of an off-axis vector-beam by a tilted aperture

Abstract

Manifestations of orbital angular momentum induced effects in the diffraction of a radially polarized vector beam by an off-axis tilted aperture are studied both experimentally and theoretically. Experiments were carried out to extract the degree of circular polarization, which was shown to be proportional to the on-axis component of the spin angular momentum density. We report a clear separation of the regions of dominance of the right and left circular polarizations associated with positive and negative topological charges respectively, which is reminiscent of the standard vortex-induced transverse shift, albeit in the diffraction scenario. The experimental results are supported by model simulations and the agreement is quite satisfactory. The results are useful to appreciate the orbit-orbit related effects due to unavoidable misalignment problems (especially for vortex beams).