作为光波最重要的本征物理属性之一，光场偏振态在研究光与物质相互作用中占有重要地位。矢量光场的波前调控为其聚焦场提供了更加复杂、更加灵活可控的振幅、相位以及偏振态分布，丰富了光与物质相互作用的手段，为材料表征提供了传统线偏振、圆偏振光场所不可替代的研究方法，具有重要的物理意义和实际应用价值。本文将综述矢量光场最新的研究进展，详细介绍矢量光场的偏振态特性、产生方法，以及紧聚焦轴对称矢量光场波前调控在远场小尺度光斑的产生、磁光记录、单分子/颗粒取向探测、任意三维偏振态的产生、高密度数据存储、信息加密以及矢量光场波前重构等方面的重要应用。

As one of the most fundamental properties of light fields, polarization has attracted immense attentions from researchers. Controlling the polarization states of light fields is of vital significance in the interactions between light fields and materials. Under tightly focused conditions, wavefront manipulation of vector beams introduces flexible and controllable amplitude, phase and polarization distributions into their focal fields, and hence diversifies the interactions between light fields and materials. In this paper, the latest progresses and developments of wavefront manipulation of tightly focused cylindrical vector beams are reviewed. Polarization properties, generation methods, and the applications of tightly focused cylindrical light fields including generations of far-field sub-diffraction focal spots, opto-magnetic recording, detections of single-molecule/particle orientations, generations of arbitrary 3D polarization states, high-density data storage, information encryption, and reconstruction of vectorial wavefronts are concretely reviewed.