Experimental realization to efficiently sort vector beams by polarization topological charge via Pancharatnam–Berry phase modulation

This paper reports the experimental realization of efficiently sorting vector beams by polarization topological charge (PTC). The PTC of a vector beam can be defined as the repetition number of polarization state change along the azimuthal axis, while its sign stands for the rotating direction of the polarization. Here, a couple of liquid crystal Pancharatnam–Berry optical elements (PBOEs) have been used to introduce conjugated spatial phase modulations for two orthogonal circular polarization states. Applying these PBOEs in a 4-f optical system, our experiments show the setup can work for PTC sorting with a separation efficiency of more than 58%. This work provides an effective way to decode information from different PTCs, which may be interesting in many fields, especially in optical communication.