Generation of vector beams using a Wollaston prism and a spatial light modulator.

We propose a method based on a 4-f system that mainly consists of a spatial light modulator (SLM) and a Wollaston prism, to generate arbitrary vector beams with specifically designed amplitude, phase, and polarization. The incident beam is divided by a computer-generated hologram written on the SLM into two beams, each of which is encoded with a prescribed complex field and then are combined efficiently into a single beam by the Wollaston prism. Combining capability of the Wollaston prism can be tuned through the prism’s rotation. We achieve a conversion efficiency that is three-fold higher than that of using a Ronchi grating for the beam combination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]