Interferometer setup for the observation of polarization structure near the unfolding point of an optical vortex beam in a birefringent crystal.
We propose a novel birefringent interferometer setup for the study of unfolding points, and obtain for the first time to our knowledge the spatial polarization structure very near the unfolding point of a uniformly polarized optical vortex beam propagating in a birefringent crystal. The unfolding point is reconstructed by folding back the two separated eigen-beams at the output of the birefringent crystal into a single beam using another identical birefringent crystal, resulting in a birefringent interferometer of Mach-Zehnder type. We also demonstrate that the separation near the unfolding point can be varied by a small rotation of the second crystal.
Institute for Laser Science, The University of Electro-Communications 1-5-1, Chofugaoka, Chofu, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan. maruthi@ice.uec.ac.jp
Maruthi M
MM
Brundavanam
Yoko
Y
Miyamoto
Rakesh Kumar
RK
Singh
Dinesh N
DN
Naik
Mitsuo
M
Takeda
Ken'ichi
K
Nakagawa