We study the possibility of creating spatial patterns having subwavelength size by using the so-called dark states formed by the interaction between atoms and optical fields. These optical fields have a specified spatial distribution. Our experiments in Rb vapor display spatial patterns that are smaller than the length determined by the diffraction limit of the optical system used in the experiment. This approach may have applications to interference lithography and might be used in coherent Raman spectroscopy to create patterns with subwavelength spatial resolution.
Entangled-photon coincidence imaging is a method to nonlocally image an object by transmitting a pair of entangled photons through the object and a reference optical system, respectively. The image of the object can be extracted from the coincidence rate of these two photons. From a classical perspective, the image is proportional to the fourth-order correlation function of the wave field. Using classical statistical optics, we study a particular aspect of coincidence imaging with incoherent sources. As an application, we give a proposal to realize lensless Fourier-transform imaging, and discu…
High-resolution ghost image and ghost diffraction experiments are performed by using a single source of thermal-like speckle light divided by a beam splitter. Passing from the image to the diffraction result solely relies on changing the optical setup in the reference arm, while leaving untouched the object arm. The product of spatial resolutions of the ghost image and ghost diffraction experiments is shown to overcome a limit which was formerly thought to be achievable only with entangled photons.
We address the feasibility of imaging geometric and orbital structure of a polyatomic molecule on an attosecond time-scale using the laser induced electron diffraction (LIED) technique. We present numerical results for the highest molecular orbitals of the CO2 molecule excited by a near infrared few-cycle laser pulse. The molecular geometry (bond-lengths) is determined within 3% of accuracy from a diffraction pattern which also reflects the nodal properties of the initial molecular orbital. Robustness of the structure determination is discussed with respect to vibrational and rotational motion…
We show that far field diffraction image of spontaneously scattered Stokes photons can be used for detection of spin entanglement and for metrology of fields gradients in cold atomic ensembles. For many-body states with small or maximum uncertainty in spin-excitation number, entanglement is simply witnessed by the presence of a sharp diffraction peak or dip. Gradient vector of external fields is measured by the displacement of a diffraction peak due to inhomogeneous spin precessions, which suggests a new possibility for precision measurement beyond the standard quantum limit without entangleme…
I propose a quantum imaging method that can beat the Rayleigh-Abbe diffraction limit and achieve de Broglie resolution without requiring a multiphoton absorber as the detector. Using the same non-classical states of light as those for quantum lithography, the proposed method requires only intensity measurements, followed by image post-processing, to produce the same complex image patterns as those in quantum lithography. The method is expected to be experimentally realizable using current technology.
Quantum Origin of Diffraction from Bright and Dark States
School of Science, Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications（西安邮电大学理学院）；School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学物理学与信息技术学院）
We show how quantum coherence effects can be used to improve the resolution and the contrast of diffraction-limited images imprinted onto a probe field. The narrow and sharp spectral features generated by double-dark resonances (DDR) are exploited to control absorption, dispersion and diffraction properties of the medium. The spatial modulated control field can produce inhomoge- neous susceptibility of the medium that encodes the spatial feature of the control image to probe field in the presence of DDR. The transmission of cloned image can be enhanced by use of incoher- ent pump field. We fin…
Using higher-order coherence of thermal light sources, the resolution power of standard x-ray imaging techniques can be enhanced. In this work, we applied the higher-order measurement to far-field x-ray diffraction and near-field phase contrast imaging (PCI), in order to achieve superresolution in x-ray diffraction and obtain enhanced intensity contrast in PCI. The cost of implementing such schemes is minimal compared to the methods that achieve similar effects by using entangled x-ray photon pairs.
For conventional imaging, shaking of the imaging system or the target leads to the degradation of imaging resolution. In this work, the influence of the target's shaking to fourier-transform ghost diffraction (FGD) is investigated. The analytical results, which are backed up by numerical simulation and experiments, demonstrate that the quiver of target has no effect on the resolution of FGD, thus the target's imaging with high spatial resolution can be always achieved by phase-retrieval method from the FGD patterns. This approach can be applied in high-precision imaging systems, to overcome th…
Traditional optical imaging faces an unavoidable trade-off between resolution and depth of field (DOF). To increase resolution, high numerical apertures (NA) are needed, but the associated large angular uncertainty results in a limited range of depths that can be put in sharp focus. Plenoptic imaging was introduced a few years ago to remedy this trade off. To this aim, plenoptic imaging reconstructs the path of light rays from the lens to the sensor. However, the improvement offered by standard plenoptic imaging is practical and not fundamental: the increased DOF leads to a proportional reduct…
We propose a novel quantum diffraction imaging technique whereby one photon of an entangled pair is diffracted off a sample and detected in coincidence with its twin. The image is obtained by scanning the photon that did not interact with matter. We show that when a dynamical quantum system interacts with an external field, the phase information is imprinted in the state of the field in a detectable way. The contribution to the signal from photons that interact with the sample scales as $\propto I_{p}^{1/2}$, where $I_{p}$ is the source intensity, compared to $\propto I_{p}$ of classical diffr…
In this paper, we discuss the possibility of imaging molecular orbitals from photoelectron spectra obtained via Laser Induced Electron Diffraction (LIED) in linear molecules. This is an extension of our work published recently in Physical Review A \textbf{94}, 023421 (2016) to the case of the HOMO-1 orbital of the carbon dioxide molecule. We show that such an imaging technique has the potential to image molecular orbitals at different internuclear distances in a sub-femtosecond time scale and with a resolution of a fraction of an Angström.
A practical quantum measurement method based on the quantum nature of anti-bunching photon emission has been developed to detect single particles without the restriction of the diffraction limit. By simultane- ously counting the single-photon and two-photon signals with fluorescence microscopy, the images of nearby Nitrogen-Vacancy centers in diamond at a distance of 8.5+/-2.4 nm have been successfully reconstructed. Also their axes information was optically obtained. This quantum statistical imaging technique, with a simple exper- imental setup, can also be easily generalized in the measuring…
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 optical imaging using quantum properties of light. An experimental realization of sub-diffraction limited quantum imaging has, however, remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate a quantum imaging method taking advantage of non-classical light naturally produced in fluorescence microscopy due to photon antibunching, a fundamentally quantum phenomenon prohibiting …
Light-field microscopy represents a promising solution for microscopic volumetric imaging, thanks to its capability to encode information on multiple planes in a single acquisition. This is achieved through its peculiar simultaneous capture of information on light spatial distribution and propagation direction. However, state-of-the-art light-field microscopes suffer from a detrimental loss of spatial resolution compared to standard microscopes. We propose and experimentally demonstrate a light-field microscopy architecture based on light intensity correlation, in which resolution is limited o…
Calculations of propagating quantum trajectories associated to a wave function provide new insight into quantum processes such as particle scattering and diffraction. Here, hydrodynamic calculations of electron beam imaging under conditions comparable to those of a scanning or transmission electron microscope display the mechanisms behind different commonly investigated diffraction conditions. The Bloch wave method is used to propagate the electron wave function and associated trajectories are computed to map the wave function as it propagates through the material. Simulations of the two-beam …
