Observing half and integer polarization vortices at band degeneracies

Far-field polarization vortices were recently found on singlet bands in the momentum-space of two-dimensional photonic lattices, also known as the dark states and bound states in continuum. Here, we theoretically proposed and experimentally verified the existence of the polarization vortices at the degenerate points of photonic dispersions, whose vortex cores can be radiative bright states. Half-charged vortices were generated from the Dirac points of {pi} Berry phase and integer-charged vortices were generated from a quadratic degeneracy. Using a home-made polarization-resolved momentum-space imaging spectroscopy, we observed the complete evolution of the splitting from one quadratic point to a pair of Dirac cones by tracking the winding of the polarization vectors and the full spectrum of iso-frequency contours.