2015/10/13 by Guanghui Yuan, Guang Yuan, Stefano Vezzoli +5
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques #Chemistry #Computational physics #Diffraction #Fourier transform #Near-Field Optical Microscopy #Open quantum system #Optics #Oscillation (cell signaling) #Photon #Physics #Quantum #Quantum imaging #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics #Quantum technology #Random lasers and scattering media #Wave function #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/lsa.2016.127
published as Light: Science & Applications volume 5, page e16127 (2016) · 21pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2015/10/13 · openalex publication_date 2016/03/08 · arxiv updated 2018/09/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract Super-oscillation is a counterintuitive phenomenon describing localized fast variations of functions and fields that happen at frequencies higher than the highest Fourier component of their spectra. The physical implications of this effect have been studied in information theory and optics of classical fields, and have been used in super-resolution imaging. As a general phenomenon of wave dynamics, super-oscillations have also been predicted to exist in quantum wavefunctions. Here we report the experimental demonstration of super-oscillatory behavior of a single-quantum object, a photon. The super-oscillatory behavior is demonstrated by tight localization of the photon wavefunction after focusing with an appropriately designed slit mask to create an interference pattern with a sub-diffraction hotspot (~0.45 λ ). Such quantum super-oscillation can be used for low-intensity far-field super-resolution imaging techniques even down to single-photon counting regime, which would be of interest to quantum physics and non-invasive and label-free biological studies.