Determination of steep sidewall angle using polarization-sensitive asymmetric scattering

The sidewall angle (SWA) of a nanostructure exerts influence on the performance of the nanostructure and plays an important role in processing nano-structural chips. It is still a great challenge to determine steep SWAs from far field measurements especially when the SWAs are close to 90°. Here, we propose a far-field detection system to...

Demonstration of lateral resolution enhancement by focusing amplitude modulated radially polarized light in a confocal imaging system

Lateral resolution enhancement is demonstrated in a confocal imaging system with amplitude-modulated radially polarized (RP) light at the wavelength Annular pupil fields and optimized amplitude distribution functions can be realized with a spatial light modulator. By comparing images obtained with full and amplitude modulated apertures of RP...

Superresolution effect due to a thin dielectric slab for imaging with radially polarized light

Improving the image quality of small particles is a classic problem and especially challenging when the distance between particles are below the optical diffraction limit. We propose a imaging system illuminated with radially polarized light combined with a suitable substrate that contains a thin dielectric layer to demonstrate that the...

Angular momentum properties of hybrid cylindrical vector vortex beams in tightly focused optical systems

Optical angular momenta (AM) have attracted tremendous research interest in recent years. In this paper we theoretically investigate the electromagnetic field and angular momentum properties of tightly focused arbitrary cylindrical vortex vector (CVV) input beams. An absorptive particle is placed in focused CVV fields to analyze the optical...

Confocal microscopy with a radially polarized focused beam

Rigorous vectorial focusing theory is used to study the imaging of small adjacent particles with a confocal laser scanning system. We consider radially polarized illumination with an optimized amplitude distribution and an annular lens to obtain a narrower distribution of the longitudinal component of the field in focus. A polarization...