The intensity split of tightly focusing radial and azimuthal polarized vortex beam in longitudinal direction

Abstract

Optical vortices have been applied in many fields for their distinct properties. In this paper, we explore the focusing intensity distribution of the radially and azimuthally polarized vortex beam (VB) with varying beam waist parameter. The results reveal that low beam waist parameter is beneficial to form a super-resolution spot. In the condition of the high beam waist parameter, the focusing intensity of radially and azimuthally polarized VB along the longitudinal direction would split to multi-spots. Meanwhile, the focal plane intensity distribution become non-symmetrical as well as expansion when the beam waist parameter increase. Therefore, appropriate beam waist must be chosen for the two kind beam in actually application. Furthermore, we also investigate the focal properties affected with helical phase TC. The results reveal that the focal spot size of radially polarized VB along the longitudinal gradually increases with the order of helical phase. The peak intensity ratio of the longitudinal and transverse field of radially polarized VB holds a maximum value when helical phase order l = 0 and becomes to minimum when l =1 , then gradually increases with the order of helical phase. For the azimuthally polarized VB, when l =1 , the focal intensity would exhibit an excellent small solid spot. The results obtained in this paper are useful for application of radially and azimuthally polarized VB.