Alj, D.Paladugu, S.Volpe, G.Caputo, R.Umeton, C.2016-02-082016-02-0820150003-6951http://hdl.handle.net/11693/26474Local shaping of the polarization state of a light beam is appealing for a number of applications. This can be achieved by employing devices containing birefringent materials. In this article, we present one such enables converting a uniformly circularly polarized beam into a cylindrical vector beam (CVB). This device has been fabricated by exploiting the POLICRYPS (POlymer-LIquid CRYstals-Polymer-Slices) photocuring technique. It is a liquid-crystal-based optical diffraction grating featuring polar symmetry of the director alignment. We have characterized the resulting CVB profile and polarization for the cases of left and right circularly polarized incoming beams.EnglishBirefringenceCircular polarizationLiquid crystal polymersLiquid crystalsPolarizationBirefringent materialsCircularly polarized beamCylindrical vector beamDiffractive structuresOptical diffraction gratingsPhotocuring techniquePolymer liquid crystalsRight circularly polarizedCrystal symmetryArticle10.1063/1.4935605