The resolution limit of far-field optical microscopy is reexamined with a full vectorial theoretical analysis. A highly symmetric excitation optical field and optimized detection scheme are proposed to harness the total point-spread function for a microscopic system. Spatial resolution of better than $1/6$\lambda${}$ is shown to be obtainable, giving rise to a resolution better than 100 nm with visible light excitation. The experimental measurement is applied to examine nonfluorescent samples. A lateral resolution of $1/5$\lambda${}$ is obtained in truly far-field optical microscopy with a working distance greater than $$\sim${}500$\lambda${}$. Comparison is made for the far-field microscopic measurement with that of a nearfield scanning optical microscopy, showing that the proposed scheme provides a better image quality.

A method to recover the image of an object behind thin turbid layers is developed by wavefront shaping technique. The optimized wavefront is generated by modulating the scattering light of a known object with a spatial light modulator. A Pearson Correlation Coefficient is introduced as a cost function for the optimization. A beam scanning method based on optical memory effect is proposed to further enlarge the Field-of-View (FOV). The experimental results show good fidelity and large FOV of the recovered image.

In this Letter, based on the Richards and Wolf diffraction theory, an ultralong optical needle with pure transverse polarization is numerically generated by tightly focusing an azimuthally polarized beam through an annular vortex binary filter. Such an ultralong transversely polarized optical needle is generated through the $\pi$ phase shift between adjacent rings of the binary filter. We show that such a pure transverse optical needle can induce pure longitudinal magnetization with a subwavelength lateral size ($0.38\lambda$) and an ultralong longitudinal depth ($7.48\lambda$) through the inverse Faraday effect. The corresponding needle aspect ratio of 20 is twice as large as that of the longitudinal magnetization needle generated by electron beam lithography.

Human ability to visualize an image is usually hindered by optical scattering. Recent extensive studies have promoted imaging technique through turbid materials to a reality where color image can be restored behind scattering media in real time. The big challenge now is to recover objects in a large field of view with depth resolving ability. Based on the existing research results, we systematically study the physical relationship between speckles generated from objects at different planes. By manipulating a given single point spread function, depth-resolved imaging through a thin scattering medium can be extended beyond the original depth of field (DOF). Experimental testing of standard scattering media shows that the DOF can be extended up to 5 times and the physical mechanism is depicted. This extended DOF is benefit to 3D imaging through scattering environment, and it is expected to have important applications in science, technology, bio-medical, security and defense.

We demonstrate a high-speed method to image objects through thin scattering media and around corners. The method employs a reference object of known shape to retrieve the speckle-like point spread function of the scatterer. We extract the point spread function of the scatterer from a dynamic scene that includes a static reference object and uses this to image the dynamic objects. Sharp images are reconstructed from the transmission through a diffuser and from the reflection off a rough surface. The sharp and clean reconstructed images from single shot data exemplify the robustness of the method.

Incoherently illuminated or luminescent objects give rise to a low-contrast speckle-like pattern when observed through a thin diffusive medium, as such a medium effectively convolves their shape with a speckle-like point spread function (PSF). This point spread function can be extracted in the presence of a reference object of known shape. Here it is shown that reference objects that are both spatially and spectrally separated from the object of interest can be used to obtain an approximation of the point spread function. The crucial observation, corroborated by analytical calculations, is that the spectrally shifted point spread function is strongly correlated to a spatially scaled one. With the approximate point spread function thus obtained, the speckle-like pattern is deconvolved to produce a clear and sharp image of the object on a speckle-like background of low intensity.