Tailored intensity landscapes by tight focusing of singular vector beams.

Vector beams are of major importance to tailor tightly focused fields by creating an additional z-polarization component. Till now, mainly focusing properties of fundamental vector beams have been investigated, whereas the knowledge of focused higher-order singular vector fields is still missing. We fill this gap by numerical analysis of these fields, applying their attractive characteristics as including a spatially adjustable amount of radial and azimuthal components. We demonstrate the realization of three-dimensional polarization structures whose total intensity resembles dark stars and bright flowers. Further, we tailor these focal intensity landscapes by modulating the order of incident vector fields. This in turn allows shaping the focus of a light field for specific applications as e.g. advanced microscopy.

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