Taxonomy of hybridly polarized Stokes vortex beams

Structured beams carrying topological defects, namely phase and Stokes singularities, have gained extensive interest in numerous areas of optics. The non-separable spin and orbital angular momentum states of hybridly polarized Stokes singular beams provide additional freedom for manipulating optical fields. However, the characterization of hybridly polarized Stokes vortex beams remains challenging owing to the degeneracy associated with the complex polarization structures of these beams. In addition, experimental noise factors such as relative phase, amplitude, and polarization difference together with beam fluctuations add to the perplexity in the identification process. Here, we present a generalized diffraction-based Stokes polarimetry approach assisted with deep learning for efficient identification of Stokes singular beams. A total of 15 classes of beams are considered based on the type of Stokes singularity and their associated mode indices. The resultant total and polarization component intensities of Stokes singular beams after diffraction through a triangular aperture are exploited by the deep neural network to recognize these beams. Our approach presents a classification accuracy of 98.67% for 15 types of Stokes singular beams that comprise several degenerate cases. The present study illustrates the potential of diffraction of the Stokes singular beam with polarization transformation, modeling of experimental noise factors, and a deep learning framework for characterizing hybridly polarized beams.