The Synthetic Aperture Microscope

Abstract

It is well known that the resolution of a microscope depends critically on the aperture of its objective lens. Achieving wide apertures requires the lens to be extremely close to the sample being imaged, which is often inconvenient. We describe an optical microscope, currently in breadboard form, that achieves a large aperture, and thus high resolution, with a large (theoretically unlimited) working distance, based on the principles of synthetic aperture radar (SAR).