The origin of the Gouy phase anomaly and its generalization to astigmatic wavefields

One of the most poorly understood subjects in physical optics is the origin of the Gouy phase (sometimes called "the phase anomaly near focus"). This is evident from the large number of publications on the subject, many of which attribute it to quite different causes. In this paper we show that the Gouy phase anomaly can be clearly understood from elementary properties of normal congruences of light rays and from the relationship between geometrical optics and physical optics. We also show that the Gouy phase anomaly may be regarded as a degenerate case of a rapid π/2 phase change that is found to occur at each focal line of an astigmatic pencil of rays. The intensity distribution in the region of the phase changes is also presented. Furthermore, symmetry relations for both the phase anomaly and the intensity distribution are derived. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved