ABSTRACT
Polarization is an important property of light. This vector nature of light and its interactions with matters have been exploited in many areas of optical sciences and optical engineering. Most past research dealt with optical beams with spatially homogeneous states of polarization (SOP), such as linear, elliptical, and circular polarizations. For these cases, the spatial dependence of SOP in the beam cross section has been largely ignored. This simple approach has worked very well in most of the cases in the past. With the recent rapid advances in high-power computing and micro-and nanofabrication, optical beams with spatially variant SOPs within the beam cross section are increasingly available and the study of their properties both numerically and experimentally has become more accessible. By engineering the spatial SOP distribution of a light beam purposefully and carefully, new effects and phenomena that can expand the functionality and enhance the capability of optical systems are expected.
