Images of finite sized spherical particles in confocal and conventional microscopes when illuminated with arbitrary polarization.

We investigate the form of the image of a finite sized spherical particle in confocal and conventional microscopes when the illuminating light has an arbitrary polarization. In particular, we take the cases of radial and azimuthal polarizations and use the Mie theory to find the scattered field from differently sized particles for these cases. We present numerical results for the changes in the detected intensity when subresolution and resolvable spherical particles are illuminated with particular wavelengths and polarizations.

Method for the generation of arbitrary complex vector wave fronts.

We describe an extremely versatile method that permits the accurate generation of arbitrary complex vector wave fields. We implement the scheme using a reconfigurable binary optical element that also permits additional fine tuning, such as aberration correction, to be performed. As examples we demonstrate the generation of both azimuthally and radially polarized beams.