Strongly Focused Circularly Polarized Optical Vortices Regulated by a Fractal Conical Lens

In this paper, a recently-proposed pure-phase optical element, the fractal conical lens (FCL), is introduced for the regulation of strongly-focused circularly-polarized optical vortices in a high numerical aperture (NA) optical system. Strong focusing characteristics of circularly polarized optical vortices through a high NA system in cases with and without a FCL are investigated comparatively. Moreover, the conversion between spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of the focused optical vortex in the focal vicinity is also analyzed. Results revealed that a FCL of different stage S could significantly regulate the distributions of tight focusing intensity and angular momentum of the circularly polarized optical vortex. The interesting results obtained here may be advantageous when using a FCL to shape vortex beams or utilizing circularly polarized vortex beams to exploit new-type optical tweezers.