Tight focusing of plane waves from micro-fabricated spherical mirrors
Optics
2009-11-13 v2 Atomic Physics
Abstract
We derive a formula for the light field of a monochromatic plane wave that is truncated and reflected by a spherical mirror. Our formula is valid even for deep mirrors, where the aperture radius approaches the radius of curvature. We apply this result to micro-fabricated mirrors whose size scales are in the range of tens to hundreds of wavelengths, and show that sub-wavelength spot sizes can be achieved. This opens up the possibility of scalable arrays of tightly focused optical dipole traps without the need for high-performance optical systems.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0809.2339,
title = {Tight focusing of plane waves from micro-fabricated spherical mirrors},
author = {J. Goldwin and E. A. Hinds},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0809.2339},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 5 color figures, 1 .sty file; changes made in response to referee comments; published in Optics Express