Related papers: Beating the classical limit: A diffraction-limited…
Understanding the fundamental limits on the precision to which an optical phase can be estimated is of key interest for many investigative techniques utilized across science and technology. We study the estimation of a fixed optical phase…
Strong intensity attenuation limits the use of conventional diffraction-free optical elements. We show a possible solution to the exponential intensity attenuation limiting the use of Fresnel-type diffraction-free nanometer-scale optics by…
Nonlinear interferometers allow spectroscopy in the mid-infrared range by detecting correlated visible light, for which non-cooled detectors with higher specific detectivity and lower dark count rates are available. We present a new…
We demonstrate an x-ray beam splitter with high performances for multi-kilo-electron-volt photons. The device is based on diffraction on kinoform structures, which overcome the limitations of binary diffraction gratings. This beam splitter…
Conventional microscope objective lenses are diffraction limited, which means that they cannot resolve features smaller than half the illumination wavelength. Under white light illumination, such resolution limit is about 250-300 nm for an…
We present a technique that improves the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of range-finding, sensing, and other light-detection applications. The technique filters out low photon numbers using photon-number-resolving detectors (PNRDs). This…
Spectrograph costs have become the limiting factor in multiplexed fiber-based spectroscopic instruments, because tens of millions of resolution elements (spectral x spatial) are now required. Catadioptric (Schmidt-like) designs allow faster…
The smallest spot in optical lithography and microscopy is generally limited by diffraction. Quantum lithography, which utilizes interference between groups of N entangled photons, was recently proposed to beat the diffraction limit by a…
Conventional lens-based imaging techniques have long been limited to capturing only the intensity distribution of objects, resulting in the loss of other crucial dimensions such as spectral data. Here, we report a spectral lens that…
Structured light harnessing multiple degrees of freedom has become a powerful approach to use complex states of light in fundamental studies and applications. Here, we investigate the light field of an ultrafast laser beam with a…
Quantum lithography achieves phase super-resolution using fragile, experimentally challenging entangled states of light. We propose a scalable scheme for creating features narrower than classically achievable, with reduced use of quantum…
A Photonic Lantern (PL) is a novel device that efficiently converts a multi-mode fiber into several single-mode fibers. When coupled with an extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) system and a spectrograph, PLs enable high throughput spectroscopy…
SuperSpec is a pathfinder for future lithographic spectrometer cameras, which promise to energize extra-galactic astrophysics at (sub)millimeter wavelengths: delivering 200--500 km/s spectral velocity resolution over an octave bandwidth for…
Classical time-resolved optical spectroscopy experiments are performed using sequences of ultrashort light pulses, with photon fluxes incident on the sample which are many orders of magnitude higher than real-world conditions corresponding…
One of the well-known problems of producing instruments for Extremely Large Telescopes is that their size (and hence cost) scales rapidly with telescope aperture. To try to break this relation alternative new technologies have been…
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a fiber spectrum analyzer based on a planar waveguide chip butt-coupled with an input fiber and aligned to a standard camera without any free-space optical elements. The chip consists of a…
Terahertz spectrometers with a wide instantaneous frequency coverage for passive remote sensing are enormously attractive for many terahertz applications, such as astronomy, atmospheric science and security. Here we demonstrate a wide-band…
Laser beam profilometry is an important scientific task with well-established solutions for beams propagating in air. It has, however, remained an open challenge to measure beam profiles of high-power lasers in ultra-high vacuum and in…
Despite the broadband nature of thermal light sources, optical spectroscopy over multiple spectral bands simultaneously remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate a practical Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) that achieves…
We demonstrate a new approach to calibrating the spectral-spatial response of a wide-field spectrograph using a fibre etalon comb. Conventional wide-field instruments employed on front-line telescopes are mapped with a grid of…