Polarisation-insensitive generation of vector modes using a digital micromirror device

Abstract: In recent time there has been an increasing amount of interest in developing novel techniques for the generation of complex vector light beams. Amongst these, digital holography stands out as one of the most flexible and versatile with almost unlimited freedom to generate scalar and vector light beams with arbitrary polarisation distributions and spatial transverse profile. Recently, we put forward a novel method to quantify the non-separability of vector modes in which we reported first measurements of a compact and robust device to generate such vector modes that fully exploits the polarisation-independence of Digital Micromirror Devices (DMDs). In this manuscript we fully characterise this device and provide qualitative and quantitative analysis of the generated modes. First by reconstructing their transverse polarisation distribution, using stokes polarimetry, followed by a measure of their degree of non-separability, determined through the concurrence.