Visual Analysis of Cylindrically Polarized Light Beams’ Focal Characteristics by Path Integral

To analyze the focal characteristics of cylindrically polarized beams, a visual analysis method is proposed. As known, the focal field can be described by three mutually perpendicular components, each one is the total contribution of all parts of the incident beams. For each component of all contributing parts weapply path integral method, then from the path integral curves extract focal field properties immediately, such as polarization state or intensity distribution. The analysis process of PI is visual and more understandable, and has more powerful information extraction function, which is also helpful for the design of special filtering pupil.