Quick Shot

Radially polarized beams are desirable for their advantages in laser cutting, high-resolution microscopy, and optical trapping. Christa Caggiano, a participant in LLE’s Summer Research Program for High School Juniors, is shown holding a photoaligned liquid crystal device she made that converts linearly polarized light to radially polarized light. The background image is a previously captured far field of a radially polarized beam, which is a doughnut-shaped intensity distribution.