Geometric spin Hall effect of light with inhomogeneous polarization

Abstract The spin Hall effect of light originates from spin-orbit interaction of light, which manifests two types of geometric phases. In this paper, we report the observation of a geometric spin Hall effect by generating a light beam with inhomogeneous polarization distribution. Unlike the previously reported geometric spin Hall effect observed in a tilted beam-detector system, which is believed to result from an effective spin-redirection Berry geometric phase, the geometric spin Hall effect demonstrated here is attributed to an effective, spatially varying Pancharatnam-Berry geometric phase generated by the inhomogeneous polarization geometry. Our further experiments show that the geometric spin Hall effect can be tuned by tailoring the polarization geometry of light, demonstrating the spin states of photons can be steered with a great flexibility.