Investigation of focusing inhomogeneously polarized higher-order laser beams
S.V. Karpeev, S.N. Khonina, N.L. Kazanskiy, S.V. Alferov

Full text of article: Russian language.

Abstract:
We investigate focusing of laser beams with radial and azimuthal polarization formed by ear-lier developed optical system based on summation of two beams with circular polarization. Inves-tigation was spent by a method of confocal microscopy. The experiments have shown distinctions in focal intensity distributions for different types of the inhomogeneously polarized beams and as a whole are in agreement with results of the numerical modeling.

Key words:
inhomogeneously polarized beams, circular, radial and azimuthal polarization, higher-order cylindrical beams, confocal microscopy.

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