Bimeronic beams from superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian beams with unequal topological charge with a digital micromirror device

Abstract

In this paper, we generate bimeronic beams by superposing two orthogonally and linearly polarized Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams with unequal topological charge, ℓ₁ ≠ ℓ₂. The two LG beams were reconstructed from two separate fork holograms uploaded in a single digital micromirror device (DMD). The bimeronic beams were characterized using the skyrmion number which was calculated from the Stokes parameters. The skyrmion numbers were further related to the polarization profile of the beams. We have observed that there is a concentric ring pattern in the S₁ parameter while petal structures were observed in the S₂ and S₃ parameters. The total number of petals observed is directly proportional to twice the skyrmion number. Moreover, the number of C-point singularities were also found to be twice as the skyrmion number.