Intrinsic formation of electromagnetic divergence and rotation by parabolic focusing

Abstract

A linearly polarized electromagnetic wave is found to form divergent and rotation fields after focused by an off-axis parabolic mirror. These distributions are generated within a subwavelength scale around the focus and at times when the electric field at the focus vanishes. We theoretically and experimentally show that not only the direction but also the structure of the distributions varies with the incident polarization. In addition, the distributions move in one direction with a phase velocity faster than the speed of light.