Focusing of light beams by the phase apodization pupil

Abstract

We investigated reduction of the size of the illuminated beam in the focal region produced by the optical systems of NA = 0.99 has been. The intensity distributions of polarized light field in the focal volume for the phase apodization pupil have been discussed. The circular pupil in different phase apodization situations can be employed to control the field components in the resultant intensity distribution. We show that both axial and transverse resolution improvement in the focal distribution is possible by applying proper phase engineering in the annulus of the pupil function.