Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Classical diffraction theory is used to investigate the effects of high numerical aperture on the focusing of coherent light. By expanding the diffracted beam in plane waves, we show that the lens action can be expressed as a succession of three Fourier transforms. Furthermore, polarization effects are included in the model in a natural way. Some numerical results of the theory are also presented.
Masud Mansuripur (1986) studied this question.