Super-oscillatory lattices structured illumination microscopy beyond two-fold resolution enhancement

Abstract

Super-oscillatory (SO) lattices are multi-lobes patterns that exhibit local spatial frequencies beyond the bandwidth limit of their Fourier spectrum. However, the method generates SO lattices by interfering multiple beams requires complicated optical systems to control the contribution of different beams. In this paper, we present a novel approach for creating SO lattices based on diffractive optics, which simplifies the system design and implementation. Using this method, we design a diffractive optical element (DOE) that produces a two-dimensional SO lattice with a local spatial frequency exceeding the cut-off frequency by 10%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of generating a SO lattice by diffractive optics. We then apply the SO lattice to structured illumination microscopy (SOL-SIM) and evaluate its super-resolution performance through experiments. The results demonstrate that our method provides a new perspective to break the two-fold resolution enhancement limit of linear SIM in far-field super-resolution microscopy domain.