  Harnessing the spontaneous emission of incoherent quantum emitters is one of
the hallmarks of nano-optics. Yet, an enduring challenge remains-making them
emit vector beams, which are complex forms of light associated with fruitful
developments in fluorescence imaging, optical trapping and high-speed
telecommunications. Vector beams are characterized by spatially varying
polarization states whose construction requires coherence properties that are
typically possessed by lasers-but not by photons produced by spontaneous
emission. Here, we show a route to weave the spontaneous emission of an
ensemble of colloidal quantum dots into vector beams. To this end, we use
holographic nanostructures that impart the necessary spatial coherence,
polarization and topological properties to the light originating from the
emitters. We focus our demonstration on vector vortex beams, which are chiral
vector beams carrying non-zero orbital angular momentum, and argue that our
approach can be extended to other forms of vectorial light.
