Imaging with a steerable photonic nanojet probe

Abstract

The lateral and vertical resolution in conventional optical microscopy is restricted by fundamental diffraction limits. One direction towards super-resolution optical microscopy is the use of photonic nanojets (PNJs) for sample illumination. Here, the aim is to exploit the high spatial localization of PNJs to allow measurements of sub-classical particles and features in spite of their small size compared to the operating wavelength. The applications of super-resolution methods include fluorescence and Raman microscopy, scatterometric measurements, and optical imaging. As a step towards PNJ scanning microscopy, we here apply our recently proposed method for fast and precise steering of PNJs over a large dynamical range in the near field. In a proof-of-concept computation, we use the steerable optical probe to extract information on structures beyond the classical lateral and vertical resolution limits.