Abstract

Cylindrical vector beams have created an increasing interest for applications in confocal optical microscopy due to their unique polarization properties in the focal region of a high numerical aperture objective lens or in a parabolic mirror. They have proven to be an efficient technique for probing the threedimensional orientation and dimensionality of the excitation transition dipole moment (TDM) of single nanoparticles and single quantum systems. (180.0180)

© 2012 Optical Society of America