Polarization characterization in the focal volume of high numerical aperture objectives

In this paper the polarization states of linearly and radially polarized plane wave and doughnut beams in the focal volume of high numerical aperture objectives are studied. Through manipulating the incident polarization states of laser beams as well as the apodization of an objective and adjusting the numerical aperture of an objective, focal fields dominantly with either one transverse component or one longitudinal component can be generated. Furthermore, tailored polarization distributions with three polarization components of the same strength are also found.