Cultivation of lemon fields

Opt Express. 2016 Nov 28;24(24):28008-28013. doi: 10.1364/OE.24.028008.

Abstract

The sign rule requires that adjacent singularities on a contour have opposite signs and hence cultivation of lemon only fields poses problem as all lemons have positive index. In this paper we show that the interference of three linearly polarized plane waves can create regions of ellipse and vector fields in 2-dimensions (2D) in which a lemon lattice is interlaced in a V-point lattice. The lemons appear at intensity maxima of the lattice structure while the V-points take care of index conservation by sitting at intensity minima. In the Stokes field S12, lemons and disclinations (V-points) appear as phase vortices of topological charge + 1 and -2 respectively. In the polarization distribution the constant azimuth lines (a-lines) are seen running through lemon and disclination alternatively obeying the sign rule [24]. We envisage that such polarization lattice structure may lead to novel concept of structured polarization illumination methods in super resolution microscopy.