Spin Hall effect of light measured by interferometry.

We demonstrate a experimental method to measure the spin Hall effect of light (SHEL), which is based on the interference between two orthogonal circularly polarized beams with the help of a polarizer. Our method can measure the SHEL across the entire exit pupil, not only at the centroid as is the case with earlier methods, and hence one can scan the transverse section of the beam. We measured the SHEL of an aluminium mirror and a glass plate using a He-Ne laser at wavelength 633 nm, for incidence angles varying from 22° to 70°. The experimental results are in good agreement with theory. We also measured the shift across the transverse section of a Gaussian beam using same method.