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Updated: May 12, 2026

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
Manifestation of the Gouy phase in strongly focused, radially polarized beams
1Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
The Gouy phase, sometimes called the focal phase anomaly, is the curious effect that in the vicinity of its focus a diffracted field, compared to a non-diffracted, converging spherical wave of the same frequency, undergoes a rapid phase change by an amount of π. We theoretically investigate the phase behavior and the polarization ellipse of a strongly focused, radially polarized beam. We find that the significant variation of the state of polarization in the focal region, is a manifestation of the different Gouy phases that the two electric field components undergo.
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