Selective acquisition of multiple states on hybrid Poincare sphere

We experimentally demonstrate an approach to acquire multiple beams on a hybrid Poincare sphere, where different states are present at various diffraction orders. Moreover, the state in each diffraction order is controllable. Our scheme is accomplished by employing liquid crystal spatial light modulators, which act as anisotropic polarization diffraction gratings. The multiple states generated in the experiment, with various polarization distributions, are verified by a polarizer and a tilted lens, showing good agreement with the prediction. Such a proposed scheme has potential applications in the domains as laser machining, nanoparticle manipulations, and so on. Published by AIP Publishing.