Abstract:
Featured by the capability of multi degree-of-freedom light-field manipulations while reserving high spatial resolution, multifocal laser arrays have been widely applied in femtosecond laser micro/nanofabrication, optical trapping, and so forth. Yet, due to the relatively lower axial resolution of single focuses within the array in comparison with the lateral resolution of their own, multifocal laser array has been refrained from isotropic 3D nanofabrication. Herein, we propose a feasible method for generation of axially super-resolved multifocal array with quasi-spherical focal spots. In particular, quasi-spherical multifocal array is optically synthesized via precise modulation on the coherent superposition of the orthogonal radially polarized beam (RPB) and azimuthally polarized beam (APB) states in the focal region based on annular amplitude modulation. We show theoretically the generation of quasi-spherical multifocal array with a high uniformity up to 99%. The average axial and lateral full-width-half maximum (FWHM) of the focal array are measured to be 0.76
λ with the standard deviations in the axial and lateral directions being 0.005
λ and 0.019
λ, respectively. The presented strategy for synthesis of quasi-spherical multifocal array with high uniformity paves the way for high-precision laser fabrication of 3D micro/nano devices.