Beating the Abbe Diffraction Limit in Confocal Microscopy via Nonclassical Photon Statistics

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate quantum enhanced resolution in confocal fluorescence microscopy exploiting the nonclassical photon statistics of single nitrogen-vacancy color centers in diamond. By developing a general model of superresolution based on the direct sampling of the kth-order autocorrelation function of the photoluminescence signal, we show the possibility to resolve, in principle, arbitrarily close emitting centers. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.143602 PACS numbers: 42.50.-p, 42.30.Va, 42.50.Ar, 42.50.St In the last decade, measurement techniques enhanced by using peculiar properties of quantum light [1,2] have been successfully demonstrated in several remarkable real application scenarios, for example, interferometric measurements aimed to reveal gravitational waves and the quantum gravity effect [3,4], biological particle tracking [5], phase contrast microscopy [6], and imaging [7,8]. Very recently, a novel technique to beat the diffraction limit in microscopy that relies on the antibunching behavior of photons emitted by single fluophores has been proposed [9], and realized in wide field microscopy [10] by using an EMCCD camera.The maximum obtainable imaging resolution in classical far-field fluorescence microscopy, according to the Abbe diffraction limit, is R ≃ 0.61λ=NA, where λ is the wavelength of the light and NA is the numerical aperture of the objective. This restricts the current capability of precisely measuring the position of very small objects such as single photon emitters (color centers, quantum dots, etc.) [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], limiting their potential exploitation in the frame quantum technology [20,21]. In general, the research of methods to obtain a microscopy resolution below the diffraction limit is a topic of the utmost interest [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] that could provide dramatic improvement in the observation of several systems spanning from quantum dots [30] to living cells [31][32][33][34]. As a notable example, in several entanglement-related experiments using strongly coupled single photon emitters it is of the utmost importance to measure their positions with the highest spatial resolution [35]. In principle, this limitation can be overcome by recently developed microscopy techniques such as stimulated emission depletion (STED) and ground state depletion (GSD) [36,37]. Nevertheless, even if they have been demonstrated effectively able to provide superresolved imaging in many specific applications, among which are color centers in diamond [38], they are characterized by rather specific experimental requirements (dual laser excitation system, availability of luminescence quenching mechanisms by stimulated emission, nontrivial shaping of the quenching beam, high power). Furthermore, these techniques are not suitable in applications in which the fluorescence is not optically induced [39,40], so that new methods are required for those applications.Inspired by the works in [9], in this Letter we develop a comprehensive theory of superresolution ima...

Nanoscale Sensing Using Point Defects in Single-Crystal Diamond: Recent Progress on Nitrogen Vacancy Center-Based Sensors

“…Finally, we mention that super-resolution images of NV centers in bulk diamond were recorded using stimulated emission depletion microscopy [127], ground state depletion microscopy [128], stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy [129] and by sampling second-and third-order photon correlation function [130]. These techniques beat the Abbé resolution limit without the need for near-field imaging.…”

Unlocking the Hidden Information in Starlight

“…[72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79] as another class of superresolution imaging protocols, which require coherent or nonclassical sources and multiphoton coincidence measurements and do not consider statistical inference. It is well known in statistical optics that a multiphoton coincidence measurement, such as the obsolete Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometry, fundamentally has a much poorer signal-to-noise ratio than amplitude interferometry because multiphoton coincidence events are rare for thermal optical sources [23,27].…”

Indistinguishability-induced classical-to-nonclassical transition of photon statistics

“…It also has been well applied in quantum super-resolution microscopy [6,7] to achieve nanoscale resolution. Generally, the photon statistics is mainly determined by the number of the emitters and the process of the photon-matter interaction.…”