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First discovered by Ernest Abbe in 1873, the resolution limit of a far-field microscope is considered determined by the numerical aperture and wavelength of light, approximately $\lambda$/2NA. With the advent of modern fluorescence…
In recent years several far-field microscopy techniques have been developed which manage to overcome the diffraction limit of resolution. A unifying classification scheme for them is clearly desirable. We argue that existing schemes based…
The fast-growing field of soft matter research requires increasingly sophisticated tools for experimental studies. One of the oldest and most widely used tools to study soft matter systems is optical microscopy. Recent advances in optical…
Fluorescence microscopy is an important and extensively utilised tool for imaging biological systems. However, the image resolution that can be obtained has a limit as defined through the laws of diffraction. Demand for improved resolution…
The optical diffraction limit, formulated by Abbe 140 years ago, imposes a bound on imaging resolution in classical optics. Over the last twenty years, many theoretical schemes have been presented for overcoming the diffraction barrier in…
The concept of the diffraction limit put forth by Ernst Abbe and others has been an important guiding principle limiting our ability to tightly focus classical waves, such as light and sound, in the far field. In the past decade, numerous…
An optical microscope is probably the most intuitive, simple and commonly used instrument to observe objects and discuss behaviors through images. Although the idea of imaging electrochemical processes operando by optical microscopy was…
Light microscopy allows observing cellular features and objects with sub-micrometer resolution. As such, light microscopy has been playing a fundamental role in the life sciences for more than a hundred years. Fueled by the availability of…
The far-field resolution of optical imaging systems is restricted by the Abbe diffraction limit, a direct result of the wave nature of light. One successful technological approach to circumventing this limit is to reduce the effective size…
Superresolution fluorescence microscopy techniques beat the diffraction limit, enabling ultra-high resolution imaging in biological physics and nanoscience. In all cases that have been studied experimentally, the resolution scales inversely…
We realize a scanning probe microscope using single trapped $^{87}$Rb atoms to measure optical fields with subwavelength spatial resolution. Our microscope operates by detecting fluorescence from a single atom driven by near-resonant light…
For several centuries, far-field optical microscopy has remained a key instrument in many scientific disciplines including physical, chemical and biomedical research. Nonetheless, far-field imaging has many limitations: the spatial…
Far-field optical microscopy using focused light is an important tool in a number of scientific disciplines including chemical, (bio)physical and biomedical research, particularly with respect to the study of living cells and organisms.…
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 derive the fundamental limit to the resolution of far-field optical imaging, and demonstrate that, while a bound to the resolution of a fundamental nature does exit, contrary to the conventional wisdom it is neither exactly equal to nor…
The diffraction limited resolution of light focused by a lens was derived in 1873 by Ernst Abbe. Later in 1952, a method to reach sub-diffraction light spots was proposed by modulating the wavefront of the focused beam. In a related…
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…
Optical tweezers is a very well-established technique that has developed into a standard tool for trapping and manipulating micron and submicron particles with great success in the last decades. Although the nature of light enforces…
Super-resolution microscopy overcomes the diffraction limit of conventional light microscopy in spatial resolution. By providing novel spatial or spatio-temporal information on biological processes at nanometer resolution with molecular…
We demonstrate a new 'microsphere nanoscope' that uses ordinary SiO2 microspheres as superlenses to create a virtual image of the object in near field. The magnified virtual image greatly overcomes the diffraction limit. We are able to…