Mie Scattering Nanointerferometry for the Reconstruction of Tightly Focused Vector Fields by Polarization Decomposition

Abstract

Tightly focused vector fields, which can be generated by focusing a light beam through a high-numerical-aperture objective, play an important role in nano-optics research. How to fully characterize this kind of field in the subwavelength scale is a challenging but important task. The Mie scattering nanointerferometry technique has been proposed to reconstruct the tightly focused vector field accurately. In this work, we theoretically demonstrate that the technique can be realized by collecting the transmitted light with two orthogonal polarization states simultaneously. Therefore, when nanoparticles are employed to scan the fields to be measured, more information of the scattering field can be acquired in the far field. This is helpful for solving the linear inverse scattering problem by reducing the number of scanning points, thus making the measurement more efficient.