Partial Poincaré beams generated from wavelength-mismatched vortex plates

Abstract

We propose a convenient method for generating partial Poincare beams of light having space-variant polarization. The beams can be constructed from the incidence of the fundamental Gaussian beam with circular or linear polarization to a wavelength-mismatched vortex plate. The polarization state covers only a small portion of the surface of the Poincare sphere, particularly, being visualized by some interesting close curves. We demonstrate that the partial Poincare beam can be decomposed into different spatial modes with orthogonal polarizations. Numerical analyses of the vortex vector beam and the polarization distribution are consistent with experimental results. The partial Poincare beams could supplement the concept and application of Full Poincare beams.