Abstract-Demonstration of a terahertz pure vector beam by tailoring geometric phase

Toshitaka Wakayama, Takeshi Higashiguchi, Kazuyuki Sakaue, Masakazu Washio, Yukitoshi Otani

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-26964-7

We demonstrate the creation of a vector beam by tailoring geometric phase of left- and right- circularly polarized beams. Such a vector beam with a uniform phase has not been demonstrated before because a vortex phase remains in the beam. We focus on vortex phase cancellation to generate vector beams in terahertz regions, and measure the geometric phase of the beam and its spatial distribution of polarization. We conduct proof-of-principle experiments for producing a vector beam with radial polarization and uniform phase at 0.36 THz. We determine the vortex phase of the vector beam to be below 4%, thus highlighting the extendibility and availability of the proposed concept to the super broadband spectral region from ultraviolet to terahertz. The extended range of our proposed techniques could lead to breakthroughs in the fields of microscopy, chiral nano-materials, and quantum information science