Analysis of a photonic nanojet assuming a focused incident beam instead of a plane wave

Abstract

The analysis of a photonic nanojet formed by dielectric spheres almost always assumes that the incident field is a plane wave. In this work, using vector spherical harmonics representations, we analyze the case of a more realistic incident field consisting of a focused beam formed by a microscope objective. Also included is the situation in which the sphere is not at the focal plane of the focus beam. We find that the dimension of the nanojet beam waist is less sensitive with respect to the azimuthal angle when compared with the plane wave case. Also, by shifting the particle away from the focal plane, the nanojet beam waist can be positioned outside the particle which otherwise would be inside or at the particle surface. Inherently, no such adjustment is possible with an incident plane wave assumption.