Abstract Tight focusing of elliptically polarized vortex beams has been previously studied for optical manipulation, optical information encoding, and so on. Still, there is a lack of research on the status of the phase distribution on the focal plane. In this study, we found that the phase distribution of a tightly focused elliptically polarized vortex beam is non-uniform, i.e., the phase distribution exhibits flatter and steeper regions due to the elliptical polarization of the input vortex beam. It is mentioned that the phase non-uniformity was related to the ellipticity of the polarization of the incident beam. Furthermore, we analyzed the intensity and phase distribution of a tightly focused elliptically polarized vortex beam. We found that the spin angular momentum was converted to the orbital angular momentum because the topological charge of the output beam was greater than that of the input beam. The non-uniform phase distribution of a tightly focused elliptically polarized vortex beam enables control over light–matter interaction, leading to advancements in optical tweezers, quantum information processing, and super-resolution microscopy.
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