Nonparaxial diffraction of vectorial plane waves at a small aperture

By using the vectorial Rayleigh diffraction integrals, a nonparaxial propagation equation of vectorial plane waves diffracted at a small rectangular aperture is derived analytically and some special cases are discussed. Numerical calculation results are given to illustrate the applicability and validity of our theoretical formulae. It is shown that for the apertured case the ratio of the aperture width and wavelength affects the beam nonparaxiality. The nonparaxial approach presented in this paper has to be used for diffracted plane waves if the aperture width is comparable with or less than the wavelength.