Experimental and numerical polarization analysis of the 3D transfer behavior in microsphere-assisted interferometry for 1D phase gratings

Abstract

Enhancing the lateral resolution in optical microscopy and interferometry is of great interest in recent research. In order to laterally resolve structures including feature dimensions below the Abbe resolution limit, microspheres in the optical near-field of the specimen are shown to locally improve the resolution of the imaging system. Experimental and simulated results following this approach are obtained by a high NA Linnik interferometer and analyzed in this contribution. They show the reconstructed surface of a 1D phase grating below the resolution limit. For further understanding of the transfer characteristics, measured interference data are compared with FEM (finite element method) based simulations with respect to the polarization dependency of the relevant image information for 1D phase gratings. Therefore, the implemented Koehler illumination as well as the experimental setup utilize polarized light.