title: Manifestation of the Gouy phase in strongly focused, radially polarized beams.
abstract: The Gouy phase, sometimes called the focal phase anomaly, is the curious effect that in the vicinity of its focus a diffracted field, compared to a non-diffracted, converging spherical wave of the same frequency, undergoes a rapid phase change by an amount of π. We theoretically investigate the phase behavior and the polarization ellipse of a strongly focused, radially polarized beam. We find that the significant variation of the state of polarization in the focal region, is a manifestation of the different Gouy phases that the two electric field components undergo.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Xiaoyan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Pang
authors.forename: Taco D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Visser
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D008027:Light; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D013314:Stress, Mechanical