Interplay between Spin and Orbital Angular Momenta in Tightly Focused Higher‐Order Poincaré Sphere Beams

Spin‐orbit interactions (SOIs) of light in tight focusing systems have gained much attention due to the potential applications in optical trapping and microscopy. SOI effects strongly affect the distributions and properties of focal fields, which are determined by the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of incoming light. Remarkably, structured light fields exhibit SOI phenomena with complex behaviors. Here the SOIs in the tightly focused higher‐order Poincaré sphere beams that simultaneously contain vortex phase front and higher polarization orders are theoretically studied. The interplay between spin and orbital angular momenta in the focused field is revealed, and the amount of spin‐orbit conversion is found to be determined by the angular momentum of the incident field and the focusing system. In particular, based on the superposition of two circular polarization vortex bases, a general description of the interplay between spin and orbital parties is provided, paving a way to arbitrarily controlling the SOIs in nonparaxial fields. The findings are expected to deepen the understanding of SOIs that play a critical role in classical and quantum optics.

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