Abstract
Microsphere-assisted microscopy currently benefits from a considerable interest in the microscope-research community. Indeed, this new imaging technique enables the lateral resolution of optical microscopes to reach around λ/5 through a full-field and a far-field acquisition while being label-free. Despite the photonic jet clearly not being a relevant concept to justify the super-resolution phenomenon, we show here how it can be used to predict imaging formation and performance such as the image position and the microsphere magnification. This study allows a better understanding of the experimental measurements that have been observed over the last decade and that will be observed in coming years, through numerical simulations using different optical and geometrical parameters.
Highlights
Known since 1908, the rigorous and complete Lorenz-Mie theory predicts the interaction of light with spherical particles[1] and visible light scattered by dielectric microspheres[2] in the far field
The size of the focus spot overcome the diffraction limit, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the near-field beam waist is around a third of the wavelength[17] which is higher than the lateral resolution obtained experimentally, i.e. around λ0/710
When the point sources are placed between the last dioptre of the microsphere and the photonic jet (PJ) spot, i.e. OA = [−5.0 μm; −6.2 μm] (Fig. 4a.i and a.ii), the image is formed above the microsphere and is virtual (Fig. 4b)
Summary
Known since 1908, the rigorous and complete Lorenz-Mie theory predicts the interaction of light with spherical particles[1] and visible light scattered by dielectric microspheres[2] in the far field. Light is concentrated in a sub-diffraction-limit progressive beam known as photonic jet (PJ)[3,4] This phenomenon is not specific to dielectric spherical-shape particles. As a matter of fact, a square glass particle interacting with a plane incident wave is able to generate a PJ (Fig. 1a)[5] At this scale, propagation of light does not obey the classical laws of geometrical optics. According to many studies on the PJ prediction[3,20], the imaging process in microsphere-aided microscopy can be addressed by considering the sphere as a photonic jet lens In this manuscript, the prediction of the image formation, i.e. the image nature, the image position and the lateral magnification, is descripted in microsphere-assisted microscopy by assimilating the microsphere as a classical lens with geometrical optics. A qualitative evolution of both the image position and magnification factor from the microsphere can be predicted as a function of the position of the object plane as well as the size and the refractive index of the microsphere
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