Research on the ultrafast laser in microscopy

Abstract

Ultrafast laser technology has been making a huge difference in different areas, such as material processing, laser surgery, and military usage. In parallel with the development of ultrafast lasers, microscopy also greatly promotes modern science, even though there are still some shortcomings, and one of them is that it is hard to obtain information about dynamic samples. However, this shortcoming can be solved by using ultrafast laser technology. This review will introduce the concept of ultrafast laser technology and electron microscopy, while several limitations of conventional electron microscopy will be mentioned. This paper also introduces two advanced technology in ultrafast microscopy. Nowadays, by taking advantage of ultrafast laser technology, the dynamic sample can be observed with highly improved temporal resolutions, which are basically restricted by the duration of pulses, but the ultrafast laser technology makes the duration even reach the range of attoseconds. However, there are some limitations, such as aberration, still hamper the development of high spatial resolution in microscopy. It is hoped that the ultrafast microscopy will break through the bottleneck of traditional microscopy in the future.