Janus vortex beams realized via liquid crystal Pancharatnam–Berry phase elements

Emerging as a family of waves, Janus waves are known to have “real” and “virtual” components under inversion of the propagation direction. Although tremendous interest has been evoked in vortex beams featuring spiral wavefronts, little research has been devoted to the vortex beam embedded Janus waves, i.e., Janus vortex beams. We propose a liquid crystal (LC) Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) phase element to demonstrate the realization of the Janus vortex beams and the modulation of the associated orbit angular momentum (OAM) and spin angular momentum (SAM). The generated Janus vortex beams show opposite OAM and SAM states at two distinct foci, revealing a spin-orbit interaction during propagation enabled by the LC PB phase element, which may play special roles in applications such as optical encryption and decryption. Other merits like reconfigurability and flexible switching between Janus vortex beams and autofocusing or autodefocusing vortex beams additionally increase the degree of freedom of manipulating vortex beams. This work provides a platform for tailoring complex structured light and may enrich the applications of vortex beams in classical and quantum optics.