Direct observation of a resolvable spin separation in the spin Hall effect of light at an air-glass interface

We theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that it is possible to directly observe the resolvable spin separation in the spin Hall effect of light at an air-glass interface by choosing optimal parameters. When a P-polarized light with a beam waist of 10 μm is incident around Brewster's angle, the two spin components of the reflected beam can be completely separated by eliminating the influence of the in-plane wavevector spread. This not only obviously reveals the strong impacts of the polarization state, the incident angle, the beam waist, and the in-plane wavevector spread, but also intuitively visualizes the observation of the spin Hall effect of light.