Experimental generation and observation of a super-resolution optical tube

Jianghua Xu,Lingling Liu,Houfei Zhu,Liping Jiang,Jinbing Hu,Songlin Zhuang,Haifeng Wang

doi:10.1142/s1793545816410029

Abstract

We generated a super-resolution optical tube by tightly focusing a binary phase modulated azimuthally polarized laser beam. The binary phase modulation is achieved by a glass substrate with multi-belt concentric ring grooves. We also characterized the 3D beam profile by using a cross-shaped knife-edge fabricated on a silicon photo-detector. The size of the super-resolution dark spot in the tube is 0.32[Formula: see text], which remains unchanged for [Formula: see text] within the tube. This optical tube may find applications in super-resolution microscopy, optical trapping and particle acceleration.

Highlights

We generated a super-resolution optical tube by tightly focusing a binary phase modulated azimuthally polarized laser beam
For obtaining nanosized e®ective light spot, the bright spot acts as the excitation beam to excite the °uorescent molecules and the dark spot acts as the stimulated emission depletion (STED) beam to de-excite the marginal °uorescent molecules
We apply a binary optics to the aperture of a focusing lens to obtain an optical tube with super-resolution dark spot, which may lead to a much higher resolution in STED microscopy

Summary

Introduction

We generated a super-resolution optical tube by tightly focusing a binary phase modulated azimuthally polarized laser beam. To reduce the size of focused bright light spots and obtain super-resolution, some researchers used binary optics to modulate the phase of lighteld on the aperture of the condensing lens.[4,5,6]

Results

Conclusion