Polarization shaping of Poincare beams by polariton oscillations

We propose theoretically and demonstrate experimentally the generation of light pulses whose polarization varies temporally to cover selected areas of the Poincare sphere with both tunable swirling speed and total duration (1 ps and 10 ps, respectively, in our implementation). The effect relies on the Rabi oscillations of two polariton polarized fields excited by two counter-polarized and delayed pulses. The superposition of the oscillating fields result in the precession of the Stokes vector of the emitted light while polariton lifetime imbalance results in its drift from a circle of controllable radius on the Poincare sphere to a single point at long times. The positioning of the initial circle and final point allows to engineer the type of polarization spanning, including a full sweeping of the Poincare sphere. The universality and simplicity of the scheme should allow for the deployment of time-varying full-Poincare polarization fields in a variety of platforms, timescales, and regimes.