Tight focusing of laser beams in λ/2-microcavity

We evaluate the field distribution in the focal spot of the fundamental Gaussian beam as well as radially and azimuthally polarized doughnut beams focused inside a planar metallic sub-wavelength microcavity using a high numerical aperture objective lens. We show that focusing in the cavity results in a much tighter focal spot in longitudinal direction compared to free space and in spatial discrimination between longitudinal and in-plane field components. In order to verify the modeling results we experimentally monitor excitation patterns of fluorescence beads inside the lambda/2-cavity and find them in full agreement to the modeling predictions. We discuss the implications of the results for cavity assisted single molecular spectroscopy and intra-cavity single molecular imaging. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.