This chapter focuses on photonic analog of the spin-orbit coupling of electrons occurring inside a graded index medium. Section 9.1 describes two physical mechanisms that can produce changes in the state of polarization of an optical beam. The vectorial form of the wave equation is solved in Section 9.2 to introduce a path-dependent geometrical phase. The photonic analog of the spin-orbit coupling and its implications are also discussed in this section. Section 9.3 considers how the scalar LPlm modes change when the coupling term is taken into account. We treat this term first as a perturbation and then obtain the exact vector modes of a GRIN medium. A quantum approach is used in Section 9.4 to discuss various polarization-dependent effects.

The focus of this chapter is on longitudinal variations of the refractive index and how such variations affect the propagation of light inside a GRIN medium. Section 7.1 describes the ray-optics and wave-optics techniques that can be used for this purpose. Section 7.2 focuses on tapered GRIN fibers and describes the impact of tapering on the periodic self-imaging for a few different tapering profiles. The analogy between a GRIN medium and a harmonic oscillator is exploited in Section 7.3 by employing several quantum-physics techniques for solving the GRIN problem. Section 7.4 is devoted to the case of periodic variations in the refractive index that are induced by changing the core’s radius of a GRIN fiber along its length in a periodic fashion.