Shaping focal light landscapes by advanced polarization modulation

Structured light represents a disruptive nanophotonic approach with applications in optical micromanipulation, plasmonic excitation, optomechanics, or high-resolution imaging. Since they require tightly focusing of complexly structured light, knowledge and customization of focal fields in all its parameters is of utmost importance. Besides well-established amplitude and phase modulation, structuring the vectorial polarization is an emerging area. Modulation of the transverse polarization represents a versatile means to obtain sophisticated three-dimensional (3d) polarization structures with strong longitudinal components. In this contribution, we present a nifty method to realize tailored 3d vectorial focal light landscapes overcoming the actual lack of on-demand customization. We demonstrate innovative focal intensity distributions that resembles dark stars or bright flowers and include polarization singularities or peculiar Möbius stripes. Besides analyzing the respective 3d polarization structure, we present tuning of the focal volume by additional phase modulation. Finally, we prove the field’s capability of trapping and orienting zeolite-L nanocontainers.