Focusing and imaging with increased numerical apertures through multimode fibers with micro-fabricated optics
Abstract
The use of individual multimode optical fibers in endoscopy applications has the potential to provide highly miniaturized and noninvasive probes for microscopy and optical micromanipulation. A few different strategies have been proposed recently, but they all suffer from intrinsically low resolution related to the low numerical aperture of multimode fibers. Here, we show that two-photon polymerization allows for direct fabrication of micro-optics components on the fiber end, resulting in an increase of the numerical aperture to a value that is close to 1. Coupling light into the fiber through a spatial light modulator, we were able to optically scan a submicrometer spot (300 nm FWHM) over an extended region, facing the opposite fiber end. Fluorescence imaging with improved resolution is also demonstrated.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1405.7548,
title = {Focusing and imaging with increased numerical apertures through multimode fibers with micro-fabricated optics},
author = {S. Bianchi and V. P. Rajamanickam and L. Ferrara and E. Di Fabrizio and C. Liberale and R. Di Leonardo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.7548},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures