We demonstrate an inner surface profile measurement that has a smooth spatial distribution. A supercontinuum beam suppresses the speckle contrast to 22% and the standard deviation of the point cloud to 40%, compared to equivalent values obtained by use of a conventional green He-Ne laser at a wavelength of 543.5 nm. A compact probe for the inner surface profile measurements using the supercontinuum beam measures the depth removed by wear of a small hole in an automobile component. The radial spatial resolution was evaluated to be 2 μm, which was of the same order as the wavelength of the supercontinuum beam. The supercontinuum beam enables fivefold improvement of the radial spatial resolution compared to the monochromatic wavelength beam because of a reduction in speckle effects.
We propose and demonstrate production of a supercontinuum vector beam by independent manipulations of an angular polarization and a geometric phase. The proposed concept consists of left- and right-hand vortex phase cancelation. Two-dimensional distributions of the angular polarization and the geometric phase in the generated vector beam are evaluated for a rigorous polarization analysis. Their azimuthal angles are linearly changed with matching ratios of more than 90%, as compared to the theoretical calculations. The geometric phase obtained from ellipsometric parameters is also shaped to be a uniform phase at an average of 0.10 rad and to angularly decrease the vortex phase up to −6.73 rad, respectively. Our strategy is sufficient for finding numerous applications, such as super-resolution microscopy, plasmonics, and spectroscopy.
Although imaging techniques using soft X-rays (SXs) are being developed as the available photon flux increases because of the continuing development of synchrotron light sources, it will be necessary to downsize the pixel size of the SX camera to produce finer SX images. Application of the stimulated emission depletion (STED) method to a scintillator plate followed by use of this plate as a sensor is one promising method to reduce the pixel size of SX cameras. A STED phenomenon occurred in the luminescence of a Ce-doped Lu2SiO5 crystal (Ce:LSO) excited using ultraviolet (UV) light when the scintillator was irradiated with azimuthally polarized laser light in the photon energy range from 1.97 eV (630 nm) to 2.58 eV (480 nm). When the excitation light source changed to synchrotron radiation (SR) light with photon energy of 800 eV, the same STED phenomenon occurred. The spot size of the luminescence was reduced by the STED phenomenon and this spot size decreased as the STED laser’s photon energy increased. The energy dependence of the Ce:LSO luminescence levels can be used to explain the change in the spot size at the luminescence point.
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