title: Effects of spherical mode coupling on near-field focusing by clusters of dielectric microspheres.
abstract: Colloidal particle lens array (CPLA) proved to be an efficient near-field focusing device for laser nanoprocessing of materials. Within CPLA, spherical particles do not act as independent microlenses. Due to the coupling of the spherical modes, the field near the clusters of spherical microparticles cannot be calculated by means of the superposition of Mie solutions for individual spheres. In the paper, the electromagnetic field distributions near laser-irradiated clusters of dielectric microspheres with configurations that match the fragments of the close-packed CPLA are studied. It is shown that some practically important mode coupling effects can be understood in terms of an effective immersion medium formed for the spherical particle by its surrounding.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ul'yanov Street, 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pikulin
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Afanasiev
authors.forename: Nadezhda
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Agareva
authors.forename: Alexander P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Alexandrov
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bredikhin
authors.forename: Nikita
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Bityurin