Bessel beams are important for light-sheet microscopy, optical trapping, nonlinear optics, or laser materials processing. For these applications, it could be very attractive to control polarization along propagation. We demonstrate, for the first time, polarization shaping of an optical pulse along its propagation. We use laser-induced nanogratings to create a polarization-shaping element, which controls the polarization distribution of a diffraction-free Bessel beam. We successfully generated femtosecond Bessel beams with a length exceeding 60 µm for a submicron focal spot diameter, where the axis of the linear polarization continuously rotates from zero up to 180 degrees.
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