Currently, cylindrical beams with radial or azimuthal polarization are being used successfully for the optical manipulation of micro- and nano-particles as well as in microscopy, lithography, nonlinear optics, materials processing, and telecommunication applications. The creation of these laser beams is carried out using segmented polarizing plates, subwavelength gratings, interference, or light modulators. Here, we demonstrate the conversion of cylindrically polarized laser beams from a radial to an azimuthal polarization, or vice versa, by introducing a higher-order vortex phase singularity. To simultaneously generate several vortex phase singularities of different orders, we utilized a multi-order diffractive optical element. Both the theoretical and the experimental results regarding the radiation transmitted through the diffractive optical element show that increasing the order of the phase singularity leads to more efficient conversation of the polarization from radial to azimuthal. This demonstrates a close connection between the polarization and phase states of electromagnetic beams, which has important implications in many optical experiments.
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