Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
1538761 Optics Communications 2007 6 Pages PDF
Abstract

It is commonly admitted that radial polarization leads to the best light beam focalisation in terms of spot size. The work presented here shows that the choice of polarization is in fact more subtle. As an example, it is pointed out that, for numerical apertures of focusing systems below 0.8, circular polarization induces the best light confinements in air, whereas for numerical apertures beyond 0.8, radial polarization seems to be the right solution. Moreover, for numerical apertures larger than 1, we propose an original solution to achieve the ultimate focal spots in linear optical regime. They are estimated to 0.36λ/NA (λ is the wavelength and NA is the numerical aperture), the current technological limit being around 65 nm.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Materials Science Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
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