Partially coherent, radially polarized beam with annular apodization.

Based on the vectorial Debye theory, the tight focusing properties of partially coherent, radially polarized vortex beams are investigated in detail. In this paper, we propose to use an amplitude modulated filter in combination with a high NA lens to generate long focal depth in the focal region. Numerical results show that the generation of long focal depth of FWHM (22.08λ) is achieved, which finds useful application in microscopy techniques such as particle acceleration, laser processing, optical micromanipulation, and beam shaping.

Generation of a strong uniform transversely polarized nondiffracting beam using a high-numerical-aperture lens axicon with a binary phase mask.

We present a theoretical approach to generate a nondiffracting beam with extended depth of focus (DOF) and a smaller focal spot along the optical axis, by tight focusing of an azimuthally polarized beam with a circular symmetrical binary phase mask and an interference effect over a high-numerical-aperture (NA) lens axicon system. We find a general azimuthal diffraction integral for the circularly symmetric binary phase mask and examine it in two special cases: a high-NA lens and a high-NA lens axicon. The azimuthally polarized beam remains well behaved in both cases. We verify that the longitudinal component generated by azimuthally polarized illumination produces the narrowest spot size for a wide range of geometries. Finally, we discuss the effects of tight focusing on a dielectric interface and provide some ideas for circumventing the effects of the binary phase mask interface and even utilize them for spot size reduction.

Generation of sub wavelength super-long dark channel using high NA lens axicon.

We investigate the focusing properties of a double-ring-shaped azimuthally polarized beam by a high numerical aperture (NA) lens axicon based on vector diffraction theory. We observe that our proposed system generates a sub wavelength focal hole of 0.5λ having large uniform focal depth of 48λ without any annular aperture. We also observed that the distribution of the total intensity near the focus has little variation with the degree of truncation ß of the incident beam by the pupil. The authors expect such a super-long dark channel may find applications in optical, biological, and atmospheric sciences.