title: Generation of flower high-order Poincaré sphere laser beams from a spatial light modulator.
abstract: We propose and experimentally demonstrate a new complex laser beam with inhomogeneous polarization distributions mapping onto high-order Poincaré spheres (HOPSs). The complex laser mode is achieved by superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian modes and manifests exotic flower-like localization on intensity and phase profiles. A simple optical system is used to generate a polarization-variant distribution on the complex laser mode by superposition of orthogonal circular polarizations with opposite topological charges. Numerical analyses of the polarization distribution are consistent with the experimental results. The novel flower HOPS beams can act as a new light source for photonic applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, 88 Tingchou Road, Sec. 4, Taipei 11677, Taiwan.
authors.forename: T H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, 88 Tingchou Road, Sec. 4, Taipei 11677, Taiwan.
authors.forename: T D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, 88 Tingchou Road, Sec. 4, Taipei 11677, Taiwan.
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, 88 Tingchou Road, Sec. 4, Taipei 11677, Taiwan.
authors.forename: L W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers, Physics Department, The City College of New York of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA.
authors.forename: R R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Alfano