Generation of diffraction-free vectorial elliptic hollow beams with space-varying inhomogeneous polarizations* *Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11304093 and 11274114), the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation, China (Grant No. 2018CFB320), and the Academic Discipline Project of Hubei Normal University, China (Grant Nos. 2014F012 and 2014F013).

Abstract

Diffraction-free vectorial elliptic hollow beams (vEHBs) are generated by an optical system composed of a short elliptic hollow fiber (EHF) and an axicon. Each beam has a closed elliptic annular intensity profile and space-varying polarization states in its diffraction-free distance of more than 1 m. The generated beams have a counter-clockwise or clockwise periodically-rotated inhomogeneous polarization. And the spin angular momentum (SAM) of the vEHBs is 1ℏ or –1ℏ which is consistent with the type of dual-mode in the EHF and the periodic polarization rotations of the vEHBs. The vEHBs have potential applications in optically trapping and micromanipulating the micro- or nano-particles, quantum information transmission, and Bose–Einstein condensates, etc.