Abstract

A rigorous diffraction theory must take into account the polarisation of incident light. However, the effects of using a vector rather than scalar diffraction analysis are predicted to be detectable on a scale too small to be seen using conventional optical techniques. Hence no quantitative comparison between vector diffraction theory and experiment has previously been performed. We present a method for mapping the focal intensity distributions of high numerical aperture lenses, for which vector diffraction effects are most notable, to the required resolution. The method employs the techniques of near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), although the near-field probe is used in the far-field in this application. The most immediately obvious consequence of including a polarised incident beam in the theory is that circular symmetry in the Airy pattern is lost, as Figure 1 shows.

© 1996 Optical Society of America