Planar binary-phase lens for super-oscillatory optical hollow needles

Abstract Optical hollow beams are suitable for materials processing, optical micromanipulation, microscopy, and optical lithography. However, conventional optical hollow beams are diffraction-limited. The generation of sub-wavelength optical hollow beams using a high numerical aperture objective len...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gang Chen, Zhixiang Wu, Anping Yu, Kun Zhang, Jing Wu, Luru Dai, Zhongquan Wen, Yinghu He, Zhihai Zhang, Senlin Jiang, Changtao Wang, Xiangang Luo
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/908e9b470190461c97ed68841c96ab03
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract Optical hollow beams are suitable for materials processing, optical micromanipulation, microscopy, and optical lithography. However, conventional optical hollow beams are diffraction-limited. The generation of sub-wavelength optical hollow beams using a high numerical aperture objective lens and pupil filters has been theoretically proposed. Although sub-diffraction hollow spot has been reported, nondiffracting hollow beams of sub-diffraction transverse dimensions have not yet been experimentally demonstrated. Here, a planar lens based on binary-phase modulation is proposed to overcome these constraints. The lens has an ultra-long focal length of 300λ. An azimuthally polarized optical hollow needle is experimentally demonstrated with a super-oscillatory transverse size (less than 0.38λ/NA) of 0.34λ to 0.42λ, where λ is the working wavelength and NA is the lens numerical aperture, and a large depth of focus of 6.5λ. For a sub-diffraction transverse size of 0.34λ to 0.52λ, the nondiffracting propagation distance of the proposed optical hollow needle is greater than 10λ. Numerical simulation also reveals a good penetrability of the proposed optical hollow needle at an air-water interface, where the needle propagates through water with a doubled propagation distance and without loss of its super-oscillatory property. The proposed lens is suitable for nanofabrication, optical nanomanipulation, super-resolution imaging, and nanolithography applications.