Adding a spin to Kerker's condition: angular tuning of directional scattering with designed excitation.

We describe a method to control the directional scattering of a high-index dielectric nanosphere, which utilizes the unique focusing properties of an azimuthally polarized phase vortex and a radially polarized beam to independently excite inside the nanosphere a spinning magnetic dipole and a linearly polarized electric dipole mode normal to the magnetic dipole. We show that by simply adjusting the phase and amplitude of the field on the exit pupil of the optical system, the scattering of the nanosphere can be tuned to any direction within a plane, and the method works over a broad wavelength range.

Amplitude and phase beam shaping for highest sensitivity in sidewall angle detection.

In integrated circuits manufacturing, specific structures are used as tools to evaluate the quality of the lithographic process, and the shape of these structures is often described by a few parameters, of which in particular the sidewall angle suffers from considerable inaccuracies. Using scalar diffraction theory, we investigate whether a properly shaped cylindrically focused probing beam could increase the ability to detect tiny changes in this angle in the case of a cliff-like structure, modeled as a phase object. This paper describes the theoretical formulation used to calculate the optimized beam and compares its performance with the case of a focused plane wave.

Determination of the full scattering matrix using coherent Fourier scatterometry.

We demonstrate a method to obtain within an arbitrary numerical aperture (NA) the entire scattering matrix of a scatterer by using focused beam coherent Fourier scatterometry. The far-field intensities of all scattered angles within the NA of the optical system are obtained in one shot. The corresponding phases of the field are obtained by an interferometric configuration. This method enables the retrieval of the maximum available information about the scatterer from scattered far-field data contained in the given NA of the system.

Ray-optics analysis of inhomogeneous biaxially anisotropic media.

Firm evidence of the biaxial nematic phase in liquid crystals, not induced by a magnetic or electric field, has been established only recently. The discovery of these biaxially anisotropic liquid crystals has opened up new areas of both fundamental and applied research. The advances in biaxial liquid-crystal-related topics call for a good overview on the propagation of waves through biaxially anisotropic media. Although the literature sporadically discusses biaxial interfaces, the propagation of waves through inhomogeneous biaxially anisotropic bulk materials has never been fully addressed. For this reason, we present a novel ray-tracing method for inhomogeneous biaxially anisotropic media. In the geometrical-optics approach, we clearly show how to assess the optical properties of inhomogeneous biaxially anisotropic media in three dimensions.