We demonstrate super-resolution imaging of single rare-earth emitting centers, namely, trivalent cerium, in yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) crystals by means of stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. The achieved all-optical resolution is ≈ 80nm. Similar results were obtained on H3 color centers in diamond with resolution of ≈ 60nm. In both cases, STED resolution is improving slower than the inverse square-root of the depletion beam intensity. This is caused by excited state absorption (ESA) and interaction of the emitter with non-fluorescing crystal defects in its near surrounding.
@article{arxiv.1710.01680,
title = {Super-resolution microscopy of single rare-earth emitters},
author = {R. Kolesov and S. Lasse and C. Rothfuchs and A. D. Wieck and K. Xia and T. Kornher and J. Wrachtrup},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.01680},
year = {2018}
}