Design of superresolving continuous phase filters.

We present a procedure for designing to control the three-dimensional light-intensity distribution near focus. Our method is based on the use of a series of figures of merit that are properly defined to describe the effect of general complex pupil functions. As a practical implementation, we have applied our method to obtain super resolving continuous smoothly varying phase-only filters. The advantages of these kinds of filters are that they do not produce energy absorption and they are easy to build with a phase-controlling device such as a deformable mirror. Results of comparisons between the performance of our method and that of other phase-filter designs are provided.