Focusing light with a deep parabolic mirror
Abstract
The smallest possible focus is achieved when the focused wave front is the time reversed copy of the light wave packet emitted from a point in space (S. Quabis et al., Opt. Commun. 179 (2000) 1-7). The best physical implementation of such a pointlike sub-wavelength emitter is a single atom performing an electric dipole transition. In a former paper (N. Lindlein et al., Laser Phys. 17 (2007) 927-934) we showed how such a dipole-like radiant intensity distribution can be produced with the help of a deep parabolic mirror and appropriate shaping of the intensity of the radially polarized incident plane wave. Such a dipole wave only mimics the far field of a linear dipole and not the near field components. Therefore, in this paper, the electric energy density in the focus of a parabolic mirror is calculated using the Debye integral method. Additionally, a comparison with "conventional nearly 4pi" illumination using two high numerical aperture objectives is performed. The influence of aberrations due to a misalignment of the incident plane wave is discussed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1905.05997,
title = {Focusing light with a deep parabolic mirror},
author = {Norbert Lindlein and Markus Sondermann and Robert Maiwald and Hildegard Konermann and Ulf Peschel and Gerd Leuchs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.05997},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
Written and submitted for review in 2008 but never published