2012/12/25 by Osip Schwartz, Jonathan M. Levitt, Schwartz, O. +9
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Optical Coherence Tomography Applications #Optics (physics.optics) #Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Imaging #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1212.6003
openalex publication_date 2012/12/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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 simultaneous emission of multiple photons. Using a photon counting digital camera, we detect antibunching-induced second and third order intensity correlations and perform sub-diffraction limited quantum imaging in a standard wide-field fluorescence microscope.