ABSTRACT
So far, we have for the most part ignored eects related to the polar-ization of light. Even when we have explicitly taken it into account, we have usually considered the case of uniform polarization, in which the state of polarization is exactly the same throughout the waveeld. For paraxial waves, we were then able to treat the propagation of light through the use of the scalar wave equation. As a result, we demonstrated that the generic phase singularities of light are optical vortices, and we have devoted many pages to their properties and potential applications.
