Dyadic Green's function for aplanatic solid immersion lens based sub-surface microscopy

We present the derivation of the dyadic Green's function for the aplanatic solid immersion lens based microscopy system. The presented dyadic Green's function is general and is applicable at non-aplanatic points as well in the object plane. Thus, the electromagnetic wave formulation is used to describe the optical system without paraxial assumptions. Various important and useful properties of SIL based microscopy system are also presented. The effect of the numerical aperture of the objective on the peak intensities, resolutions and the depth of field are also reported. Some interesting longitudinal effects are also reported. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America