Imaging performance of widefield solid immersion lens microscopy

We investigate the performance of a widefield imaging system employing an aplanatic solid immersion lens. Off-axis imaging quality is examined theoretically at different radii and thicknesses of the aplanatic solid immersion lens. It is found that field curvature is the major aberration affecting the imaging quality. Aberrations are measured experimentally, and the results are in very good agreement with those obtained from simulations and demonstrate the situations where high quality images can be obtained with the aplanatic solid immersion lens.