Generation Of Several Kinds Of Novel Vector Fields And Their Propagation Properties

Since the laser appeared, people have never stopped to explore the related disciplines and realms. The laser has penetrated into many aspects of technology and life. How to make use of the laser efficiently has attracted much attention. The characteristics of light field involving the amplitude, phase and frequency have been deeply studied and widely used. But the polarization state of light and its manipulation have attracted attention recently. Vector field has inhomogeneous distribution of the state of polarization in the cross section of the light field. Comparing with the general scalar field, unique properties of vector fields make a great impact on the spatial-temporal evolution and the interaction of light with matter. Vector field has already been widely used in a varity of realms, such as optical trapping, optical micromanipulation and optical micromachining. Owing to ts novel properties and potential application, the study on polarization control and polarization characteristics of the vector field has become one of popular researches.This dissertation is mainly focused on the generation of several kinds of novel vector fields and their propagation properties. The main contents of this dissertation are as follows:1. The methods to generate vector fields have been introduced. Mainly generation methods can be divided into two kinds:one is active method which generated vector fields in the laser cavity; another one is passive method which generated vector fields out of the laser cavity. We introduce a convenient approach for generating arbitrary vector fields in a 4F system with a spatial light modulator and a common path interferometric arrangement. Using the approach, we have generated localized linearly polarized vector fields, hybrid polarized vector fields, hybrid elliptically polarized vector fields, and elliptical polarized vector fields.2. We present an arbitrary vector field with hybrid polarization based on the combination of a pair of orthogonal elliptically polarized base vectors on the Poincare sphere. Experimentally, we demonstrate the generation of such a kind of vector fields and confirm the distribution of state of polarization by the measurement of Stokes parameters. Besides, we investigate the tight focusing properties of these vector fields by means of Richards-Wolf vectorial diffraction method. It is found that the additional degree related to the ellipticity of the orthogonal base vectors allows one to control the spatial structure of polarization and to engineer the focusing field.3. We propose and demonstrate elliptically polarized vector fields by introducing the attenuators in a common path interferometer. Furthermore, we study the characteristics of the tightly focused elliptically polarized vector fields and calculate the optical force on a dielectric Rayleigh particle. It is shown that an additional degree of freedom provided by the elliptically polarized vector field allows one to control the spatial structure of polarization, to engineer the focusing field, and to manipulate the optical force on a Rayleigh particle.4. We theoretically and experimentally investigate the propagation behaviors and the focusing properties of azimuthal-variant vector fields diffracted by an annular aperture under nonparaxial and paraxial approximations. Based on the vectorial Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integrals, we analyse focused field distribution and polarization evolution caused by diffraction.