Improved diffraction integral for studying the diffracted field of a spherical microlens.

By introducing a new kind of Green function, we formulate an improved diffraction integral, which can be used to numerically evaluate the diffracted field of a microlens of plane-convex shape. Analytical expressions for the diffracted field of microlens are derived for the case where the curvature radius of the convex surface is larger than the dimension of the microlens aperture. The validity of the results and the diffracted field of the microlens are illustrated with numerical examples. The focal shifts of the diffracted field are found to depend mainly on the Fresnel number N of the microlens.