Subwavelength grating polarizers were designed to generate particular cylindrical vector beams. Based on the rigorous vector diffraction theory, the mechanism of the subwavelength gratings converting circularly polarized beam into cylindrical vector beams was analyzed. To obtain the particular type of cylindrical vector beam, a method of design of subwavelength grating polarizers was proposed and the designing procedures has been discussed. The basic function of the polarizer designed in this work is to convert the circularly polarized beam into radially/azimuthally polarized beam. By further improvement, the polarizer could generate complex cylindrical vector beams. Using the Richards-Wolf vectorial diffraction integral, the intensity distributions of the output focused beams from the polarizer were calculated. A phenomenon of divided focal spot was found in the vicinity of the geometrical focus point.
A polarizer element with subwavelength nanostructured grating was fabricated by using focused iron beam. The gratings on the polarizer are variant spatially. By designing the distribution of the gratings, the polarizer can be used to convert circularly polarized light into radially polarized light. The operation wavelength of the element is 532nm, which has been confirmed by an experiment. Parameters associated with the polarized light converted by the polarizer were also measured in the experiment.
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