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Thursday, June 30, 2016

Reflective Spin-Orbit Geometric Phase from Chiral Anisotropic Optical Media

Mushegh Rafayelyan, Georgiy Tkachenko, and Etienne Brasselet

We report on highly reflective spin-orbit geometric phase optical elements based on a helicity-preserving circular Bragg-reflection phenomenon. First, we present a dynamical geometric phase experiment using a flat chiral Bragg mirror. Then, we show that shaping such a geometric phase allows the efficient spin-orbit tailoring of light fields without the need to fulfill any condition on birefringent phase retardation, in contrast to the case of transmission spin-orbit optical elements. This is illustrated by optical vortex generation from chiral liquid crystal droplets in the Bragg regime that unveils spin-orbit consequences of the droplet’s curvature. Our results thus introduce a novel class of geometric phase elements—“Bragg-Berry” optical elements.

DOI

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