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We demonstrate an optical method for edge contrast enhancement in light microscopy. The method is based on holographic Fourier plane filtering of the microscopic image with a spiral phase element (also called vortex phase or helical phase filter) displayed as an off-axis hologram at a computer controlled high resolution spatial light modulator (SLM) in the optical imaging pathway. The phase hologram imprints a helical phase term of the form exp(i phi) on the diffracted light field in its Fourier plane. In the image plane, this results in a strong and isotropic edge contrast enhancement for both amplitude and phase objects.

With the availability of high-resolution miniature spatial light modulators (SLMs) new methods in optical microscopy have become feasible. The SLMs discussed in this review consist of miniature liquid crystal displays with micronsized pixels that can modulate the phase and/or amplitude of an optical wavefront. In microscopy they can be used to control and shape the sample illumination, or they can act as spatial Fourier filters in the imaging path. Some of these applications are reviewed in this article. One of them, called spiral phase contrast, generates isotropic edge enhancement of thin phase samples or spiral-shaped interference fringes for thicker phase samples, which can be used to reconstruct the phase topography from a single on-axis interferogram. If SLMs are used for both illumination control and spatial Fourier filtering, this combination for instance allows for the generalization of the Zernike phase contrast principle. The new SLM-based approach improves the effective resolution and avoids some shortcomings and artifacts of the traditional method. The main advantage of SLMs in microscopy is their flexibility, as one can realize various operation modes in the same setup, without the need for changing any hardware components, simply by electronically switching the phase pattern displayed on the SLMs.

We present a surprising modification of optical interferometry. A so-called spiral phase element in the beam path of a standard microscope results in an interferogram of phase samples, for which the interference fringes have the shape of spirals instead of closed contour lines as in traditional interferograms. This configuration overrides the basic problem of interferometry, i.e., that elevations and depressions cannot be distinguished. Therefore a complete sample profile can be reconstructed from a single exposure, promising, e.g., high-speed metrology with a single laser pulse. The method is easy to implement, it does not require a spatially separated reference beam, and it is optimally stable against environmental noise.

We present experiments studying the coherent motion of atoms in crystals made from on and off resonant light. The experiments confirm that inside the light-field atoms fulfilling the Bragg condition form a standing matter wave pattern. As a consequence we observed anomalous transmission of atoms through resonant light fields.

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We present a fast and flexible non-interferometric method for the correction of small surface deviations on spatial light modulators, based on the Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm. The surface distortion information is extracted from the shape of a single optical vortex, which is created by the light modulator. The method can be implemented in optical tweezers systems for an optimization of trapping fields, or in an imaging system for an optimization of the point-spread-function of the entire image path.