Abstract

I comment on the recent paper by Setälä et al. [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 18, 678 (2001)]. In that paper the calculation is entirely and exactly adopted from our previous work except the evanescent-field propagator. I shall demonstrate that the replacement of the propagator flaws the calculation. In their paper the numerical results show rich subwavelength information at absolute far-field distances (four times larger than the wavelength). I shall point out that the evanescent resolution at far-field distances cannot be of subwavelength. In the paper by Setälä et al. the description of previous work is inaccurate and misleading. I shall give what I consider to be the correct guidelines for readers to learn about the standing controversy regarding the evanescent field of a dipole.

© 2002 Optical Society of America

Evanescent and propagating electromagnetic fields in scattering from point-dipole structures: reply to comment

Tero Setälä, Matti Kaivola, and Ari T. Friberg
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 19(7) 1449-1451 (2002)

Evanescent and propagating electromagnetic fields in scattering from point-dipole structures

Tero Setälä, Matti Kaivola, and Ari T. Friberg
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 18(3) 678-688 (2001)

Far-field contribution of evanescent modes to the electromagnetic Green tensor

Andrei V. Shchegrov and P. Scott Carney
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16(10) 2583-2584 (1999)

On the extinction of radiation by a homogeneous but spatially correlated random medium: reply to comment

Alexander B. Kostinski
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 19(12) 2521-2525 (2002)

Convergence of electromagnetic field components across discontinuous permittivity profiles: comment

Lifeng Li
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 19(7) 1443-1444 (2002)