Analysis of Phase Distribution of Focused Light in High Numerical Aperture Systems

Abstract

High numerical aperture focusing is becoming increasingly important for nanotechnology related applications. Rigorous, vector evaluation of the focused field, in such cases, is usually performed using the Richards-Wolf method which is based on the Debye approach. The resulting field is known to have a piecewise quasi planar phase. A corresponding result, produced by a Fresnel-Kirchhoff integral for aplanatic optical systems of medium and low numerical apertures, leads to the well known physical fact that a quadratic phase exists when the entrance pupil is not located at the front focal plane. Yet, the amplitudes produced in both ways are in a good agreement. In this work we investigated the difference, presented above, in a 2D system with the help of the Stratton-Chu diffraction integral. The amplitude obtained by the Stratton-Chu integral was quite similar to the classic results while the phase exhibited a quadratic behavior, with the quadratic coefficient depending on the numerical aperture of the optical system. For lower numerical apertures it approached the result obtained by the Fresnel-Kirchhoff integral while for higher numerical apertures it was approaching the Richards-Wolf result. A mathematical expression for the quadratic coefficient was derived and verified for various values of numerical aperture.