Cylindrical vector beam focusing through a dielectric interface

Cylindrical vector beams have been proposed and demonstrated for applications ranging from microscopy to high energy physics. In this paper, we analyze the three-dimensional field distributions of radial and azimuthal beams focused near a dielectric interface. We give particular attention to he classic problem of high numerical aperture focusing from an immersion lens to a glass-air interface and find that the use of radially and azimuthally polarized illumination for this type of imaging provides an impressive lateral confinement of the fields over a wide range of interface positions. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.