Beating the Rayleigh limit: Orbital-angular-momentum-based super-resolution diffraction tomography

Abstract

This paper reports a super-resolution imaging approach based on orbital-angular-momentum diffraction tomography (OAM-DT), which makes an important breakthrough on the Rayleigh limit associated with conventional diffraction tomography (DT) technique. It is well accepted that orbital-angular momentum (OAM) provides additional electromagnetic degrees of freedom. This concept has been widely applied in science and technology. In this paper we revisit the DT problem extended with OAM, and demonstrate theoretically and numerically that there is no physical limit on imaging resolution with OAM-DT. The physical mechanism behind it is that either the near field or superoscillation of the transmitter is employed to super-resolve probed objects. This super-resolution OAM-DT imaging paradigm does not require near-field measurement, a subtle focusing lens, or complicated postprocessing, etc., thus providing an approach to realize the wave-field imaging of universal objects with subwavelength resolution.