Study on compact polarized light beam splitting system for generating sodium guidestars constellation

•Beam splitting system is key for multi-conjugate adaptive optics telescope.•A simple and compact polarized light beam splitting system is developed.•A polarizer and a reflector is creatively synthesized to be one mirror.•One incident beam is split into four beamlets within only 0.002 m2 work area.•This approach opens up a new way to generate sodium guidestars constellation.