Generation of longitudinally polarized multi-segment optical needles by tightly focusing RPBG beam

Abstract:

In this paper, an effective method to garner sub-wavelength longitudinally polarized multi-segment optical needle sequence by using a specially designed hybrid filter (HF) in a high numerical aperture (NA) objective focusing system is proposed. The HF is coupled by a binary phase transmission function and a multi-segment modulation function, and the binary phase filter is designed by the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and acts on the radially polarized Bessel Gaussian (RPBG) beam to obtain a longitudinally polarized optical needle with long depth of focus (DOF, 6λ) and a sub-wavelength transverse spot size (0.430λ). The optical needle is with high uniformity of 98% and high beam quality of 96%, and the negligible sidelobe is 15%. On this basis, the multi-segment optical needle sequence with tunable spacing or number can be realized by the multi-segment modulation function. It is found that the HF makes the generation of multi-segment optical needle sequence more flexible and reliable. This research has broad application prospects in material processing, particle acceleration, particle capture and other fields.