Abstract

The optical needle generated by a tightly focused vector optical field (VOF) has attracted wide attention and been applied in various areas. In previous research, two typical kinds of VOFs were generally used to generate optical needles, including radially polarized VOF (RP-VOF) and vortex azimuthally polarized VOF (VAP-VOF). Here, we propose a new kind of duplex VOF that is designed by arranging the RP-VOF and VAP-VOF in concentric belts. With the help of a binary phase mask, the optical needle of the tightly focused duplex VOF is much longer than that generated by the two conventional VOFs. The optical needle has a three-section polarization distribution, as the longitudinal component is dominant in the center, while the transverse components are at two ends along the longitudinal axis, which is different from a purely transversely polarized optical needle and optical needle with a dominant longitudinal component. Furthermore, a parabolic hybrid mask (PHM) is proposed, which can improve the length of the optical needle for the duplex VOF, RP-VOF, and VAP-VOF. When applying the duplex VOF and PHM simultaneously, an ultra-long optical needle can be achieved. The duplex VOF and PHM we propose are superior relative to other VOFs and masks in terms of generating ultra-long optical needles, which can be used in areas including optical detection, high-density storage, super-resolution imaging, and nano lithography.

© 2021 Optical Society of America

Sinusoidal-amplitude binary phase mask and its application in achieving an ultra-long optical needle

Xu-Zhen Gao, Peng-Cheng Zhao, Jia-Hao Zhao, Xue-Feng Sun, Jin-Jin Liu, Fan Yang, and Yue Pan
Opt. Express 30(15) 26275-26285 (2022)

Energy transfer of the tightly focused hybridly polarized vector optical fields with elliptic symmetry in free space

Yue Pan, Meng-Shuai Wang, Xu-Zhen Gao, Xu Zhang, RenDe Ma, Yongnan Li, Chenghou Tu, and Hui-Tian Wang
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 36(11) 1898-1907 (2019)

Flexibly modulated Poincaré sphere vector optical field in input and focal planes

Meng-Shuai Wang, Xu-Zhen Gao, Jia-Hao Zhao, Xue-Feng Sun, Yue Pan, and YunJie Xia
Opt. Express 29(14) 21071-21083 (2021)

Achievement of needle-like focus by engineering radial-variant vector fields

Bing Gu, Jia-Lu Wu, Yang Pan, and Yiping Cui
Opt. Express 21(25) 30444-30452 (2013)

Sub-wavelength sized transversely polarized optical needle with exceptionally suppressed side-lobes

Zhongsheng Man, Changjun Min, Luping Du, Yuquan Zhang, Siwei Zhu, and Xiaocong Yuan
Opt. Express 24(2) 874-882 (2016)