Geometric phase morphology of Jones matrices.

We demonstrate an innovative technique based on the Pancharatnam-Berry phase that can be used to determine whether an optical system characterized by a Jones matrix is homogeneous or inhomogeneous, containing orthogonal or nonorthogonal eigenpolarizations, respectively. Homogeneous systems have a symmetric geometric phase morphology showing line dislocations and sets of polarization states with an equal geometric phase. In contrast, the morphology of inhomogeneous systems exhibits phase singularities, where the Pancharatnam-Berry phase is undetermined. The results show an alternative to extract polarization properties such as diattenuation and retardance, and can be used to study the transformation of space-variant polarized beams.