Nonparaxial circular and weber beams from caustics

Here, we show that using a caustic-based approach and an appropriate modeling of high-numerical aperture microscope objectives with Debye integral, analytical solutions for phase mask design can be also obtained. We report on numerical modeling of high aperture microscope objectives to reproduce our experimental results. This work allows for an enhanced flexibility in designing and modeling experimentally realizable curved beams since deviations from the pure analytical case can be taken into account.