Interferometric measurement of arbitrary propagating vector beams that are tightly focused

In this work, we demonstrate a simple setup to generate and measure arbitrary vector beams that are tightly focused. The vector beams are created with a spatial light modulator and focused with a microscope objective with an effective numerical aperture of 1.2. The transverse polarization components (E-x, E-y) of the tightly focused vector beams are measured with three-step interferometry. The axial component E-z is reconstructed using the transverse fields with Gauss's law. We measure beams with the following polarization states: circular, radial, azimuthal, spiral, flower, and spider web. (c) 2023 Optica Publishing Group