Related papers: Focusing of light beyond the diffraction limit
The solid immersion lens is a powerful optical tool that allows light entering material from air or vacuum to focus to a spot much smaller than the free-space wavelength. Conventionally, however, they rely on semispherical topographies and…
Optical diffraction limit has been a long-term scientific issue since Ernst Abbe first introduced the concept in 1873. It is a constraint on the smallest light spot that can be achieved. Substantial effort has been invested in the past…
Although negative-refractive-index metamaterials have successfully achieved subwavelength focusing, image resolution is limited by the presence of losses. In this Letter, a metal transmission screen with subwavelength spaced slots is…
Breaking the diffraction limit is always an appealing topic due to the urge for a better imaging resolution in almost all areas. As an effective solution, the superlens based on the plasmonic effect can resonantly amplify evanescent waves,…
Optical microscopy offers a unique insight of biological structures with a sub-micrometer resolution and a minimum invasiveness. However, the inhomogeneities of the specimen itself can induce multiple scattering of light and optical…
A lens limited by diffraction and having two parabolic surfaces is presented. The knowledge of the following parameters: object distance, relative refractive index, lens thickness, and image distance, enables to analytically calculate the…
The optimization of the light scattered by photonic cluster made of small particles is studied with the help of the local perturbation method and special optimization algorithm. It was shown that photonic cluster can be optimized in a such…
Microscopes and various forms of interferometers have been used for decades in optical metrology of objects that are typically larger than the wavelength of light {\lambda}. However, metrology of subwavelength objects was deemed impossible…
The theory of nonlinear diffraction of intensive light beams propagating through photorefractive media is developed. Diffraction occurs on a reflecting wire embedded in the nonlinear medium at relatively small angle with respect to the…
Laser-plasma technology promises a drastic reduction of the size of high energy electron accelerators. It could make free electron lasers available to a broad scientific community, and push further the limits of electron accelerators for…
The advantages of convergent beam electron diffraction for symmetry determination at the scale of a few nm are well known. In practice, the approach is often limited due to the restriction on the angular range of the electron beam imposed…
We study the prospects of controlling transmission of broadband and bi-chromatic laser pulses through turbid samples. The ability to focus transmitted broadband light is limited via both the scattering properties of the medium, and the…
Humankind has long endeavored to control the propagation direction of light. Since time immemorial, shades, lenses and mirrors have been used to control the flow of light. In modern society, with the rapid development of nanotechnology, the…
We illustrate the possibility of light trapping and funneling in periodic arrays of metallic nanoparticles. A controllable minimum in the transmission spectra of such constructs arises from a collective plasmon resonance phenomenon, where…
In optical devices like diffraction gratings and Fresnel lenses, light wavefront is engineered through the structuring of device surface morphology, within thicknesses comparable to the light wavelength. Fabrication of such diffractive…
Spectral and spatial fringes in polarized light are produced by the interference of transmitted and reflected waves at the interface between materials with different indexes of refraction. These instrumental artifacts can affect the…
Almost one and a half centuries ago, Ernst Abbe [1] and shortly after Lord Rayleigh [2] showed that when an optical lens is illuminated by a plane wave, a diffraction-limited spot with a radius 0.61*lambda/sin(alpha) is obtained, where…
The edge diffraction of a homogeneously polarized light beam is studied theoretically based on the paraxial optics and Fresnel-Kirchhoff approximation, and the dependence of the diffracted beam pattern of the incident beam polarization is…
The focusing of high energy charged particles by a bent crystal is considered. The limits and constraints of focusing imposed by dynamics of particles are pointed out. The crystalline geometry provided the maximum magnification and minimum…
The optics of correlated disordered media is a fascinating research topic emerging at the interface between the physics of waves in complex media and nanophotonics. Inspired by photonic structures in nature and enabled by advances in…