Generation of A Space-Variant Vector Beam with Catenary-Shaped Polarization States

We demonstrate the generation of a space-variant vector beam with catenary-shaped polarization states based on the polarization interferometry. With a spatial light modulator and a common path interferometric configuration, two orthogonally circularly polarized beams with different phase modulation overlap each other, yielding the vector beams. In addition, the polarization states of this vector beam are scalable to the arbitrary spatial distribution because of its great flexibility and universal applicability. It is expected that this vector beam may have many potential and intriguing applications in the micro/nano material processing, liquid crystal elements fabrication and optical micro-manipulation, and so on.