  The spin Hall effect of light (SHEL) is the photonic analogue of spin Hall
effects occurring for charge carriers in solid-state systems. Typical examples
of this intriguing phenomenon occur when a light beam refracts at an air-glass
interface, or when it is projected onto an oblique plane, the latter effect
being known as geometric SHEL. It amounts to a polarization-dependent
displacement perpendicular to the plane of incidence. Here, we experimentally
demonstrate the geometric SHEL for a light beam transmitted across an oblique
polarizer. We find that the spatial intensity distribution of the transmitted
beam depends on the incident state of polarization and its centroid undergoes a
positional displacement exceeding one wavelength. This novel phenomenon is
virtually independent from the material properties of the polarizer and, thus,
reveals universal features of spin-orbit coupling.
