No Arabic abstract
Recent theoretical and experimental studies have shown that imaging with resolution well beyond the diffraction limit can be obtained with so-called superlenses. Images formed by such superlenses are, however, in the near field only, or a fraction of wavelength away from the lens. In this paper, we propose a far-field superlens (FSL) device which is composed of a planar superlens with periodical corrugation. We show in theory that when an object is placed in close proximity of such a FSL, a unique image can be formed in far-field. As an example, we demonstrate numerically that images of 40 nm lines with a 30 nm gap can be obtained from far-field data with properly designed FSL working at 376nm wavelength.
We study the possibility of creating spatial patterns having subwavelength size by using the so-called dark states formed by the interaction between atoms and optical fields. These optical fields have a specified spatial distribution. Our experiments in Rb vapor display spatial patterns that are smaller than the length determined by the diffraction limit of the optical system used in the experiment. This approach may have applications to interference lithography and might be used in coherent Raman spectroscopy to create patterns with subwavelength spatial resolution.
Near-field scanning optical microscopy has been an indispensable tool for designing, characterizing and understanding the functionalities of diverse nanoscale photonic devices. As the advances in fabrication technology have driven the devices smaller and smaller, the demand has grown steadily for improving its resolving power, which is determined mainly by the size of the probe attached to the scanner. The use of a smaller probe has been a straightforward approach to increase the resolving power, but it cannot be made arbitrarily small in practice due to the steep reduction of the collection efficiency. Here, we develop a method to enhance the resolving power of near-field imaging beyond the limit set by the physical size of the probe aperture. The main working principle is to unveil high-order near-field eigenmodes invisible with conventional near-field microscopy. The destructive interference of near-field waves is induced in these high-order eigenmodes by the locally varying phases, which can reveal subaperture-scale fine structural details. To extract these eigenmodes, we construct a self-interference near-field microscopy system and measure a fully phase-referenced far- to near-field transmission matrix (FNTM) composed of near-field amplitude and phase maps recorded for various angles of far-field illumination. By the singular value decomposition of the measured FNTM, we could extract the antisymmetric mode, quadrupole mode, and other higher-order modes hidden under the lowest-order symmetric mode. This enables us to resolve double and triple nano-slots whose gap size (50 nm) is three times smaller than the diameter of the probe aperture (150 nm). The subaperture near-field mode mapping by the FTNM can be potentially combined with various existing near-field imaging modalities and promote their ability to interrogate local near-field optical waves of nanoscale devices.
The resolution of optical imaging devices is ultimately limited by the diffraction of light. To circumvent this limit, modern super-resolution microscopy techniques employ active interaction with the object by exploiting its optical nonlinearities, nonclassical properties of the illumination beam, or near-field probing. Thus, they are not applicable whenever such interaction is not possible, for example, in astronomy or non-invasive biological imaging. Far-field, linear-optical super-resolution techniques based on passive analysis of light coming from the object would cover these gaps. In this paper, we present the first proof-of-principle demonstration of such a technique. It works by accessing information about spatial correlations of the image optical field and, hence, about the object itself via measuring projections onto Hermite-Gaussian transverse spatial modes. With a basis of 21 spatial modes in both transverse dimensions, we perform two-dimensional imaging with twofold resolution enhancement beyond the diffraction limit.
Speckle patterns have been widely used in imaging techniques such as ghost imaging, dynamic speckle illumination microscopy, structured illumination microscopy, and photoacoustic fluctuation imaging. Recent advances in the ability to control the statistical properties of speckles has enabled the customization of speckle patterns for specific imaging applications. In this work, we design and create special speckle patterns for parallelized nonlinear pattern-illumination microscopy based on fluorescence photoswitching. We present a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration where we obtain a spatial resolution three times higher than the diffraction limit of the illumination optics in our setup. Furthermore, we show that tailored speckles vastly outperform standard speckles. Our work establishes that customized speckles are a potent tool in parallelized super-resolution microscopy.
Super-oscillating beams can be used to create light spots whose size is below the diffraction limit with a side ring of high intensity adjacent to them. Optical traps made of the super-oscillating part of such beams exhibit superior localization of submicron beads compared to regular optical traps. Here we focus on the effect of the ratio of particle size to trap size on the localization and stiffness of optical traps made of super-oscillating beams. We find a non-monotonic dependence of trapping stiffness on the ratio of particle size to beam size. Optimal trapping is achieved when the particle is larger than the beam waist of the superoscillating feature but small enough not to overlap with the side ring.