In recent years, developments in near-field techniques exploiting far-field illumination of a pointed, apertureless probe have demonstrated a newfound excitement. This is due in part to the advantages afforded by apertureless techniques that allow for the practical implementation of spectroscopic contrast mechanisms at length scales below 100 nm. These mechanisms include Raman and infrared abso...

Near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) is a powerful alternative method to observe the optical intensity distributions in fabricated nanophotonic structures. Several groups have obtained NSOM images of photonic crystal (PC) [1-2]. Quite recently, we have reported the optical mode images obtained by NSOM on compact PC cavities based on fractional edge dislocations [3]. Here we report high...

We propose to use low-coherence-length cw optical sources with a broad spectrum in heterodyne near-field scanning microscopy in order to imitate optical pulse propagation and to obtain information about spectrally variant properties of nanophotonic components. The dispersion difference in the interferometer arms for a symmetric acousto-optic modulator arrangement is shown to be negligible over ...

We have developed a full-field optical coherence microscopy system providing intensity-based tomographic images and spectroscopic information with ultrahigh spatial resolution. Local measurements of the backscattered light spectrum center of mass are achieved through short-time Fourier analysis of a stack of en face interferometric images acquired with a Linnik-type microscope. Using a halogen ...

We demonstrate high resolution imaging with microfabricated, cantilevered probes, consisting of solid quartz tips on silicon levers. The tips are covered by a 60-nm thick layer of aluminium, which appears to be closed at the apex when investigated by transmission electron microscopy. An instrument specifically built for cantilever probes was used to record images of latex bead projection patter...

Individual carbocyanine dye molecules in a sub-monolayer spread have been imaged with near-field scanning optical microscopy. Molecules can be repeatedly detected and spatially localized (to approximately lambda/50 where lambda is the wavelength of light) with a sensitivity of at least 0.005 molecules/(Hz)(1/2) and the orientation of each molecular dipole can be determined. This information is ...

We report methods of near-field infrared microscopy with transient optically induced probes. The first technique - a transient aperture (TA) - uses photoinduced reflectivity in semiconductors to generate a relatively large transient mirror (TM) with a small aperture at its centre. We report the optical properties of the TM and TA and experiments performed on near-field imaging with the TA. The ...

We have performed measurements on terahertz (THz) apertureless near-field microscopy that show that the temporal shape of the observed near-field signals is approximately proportional to the time-integral of the incident field. Associated with this signal change is a bandwidth reduction by approximately a factor of 3 which is observed using both a near-field detection technique and a far-field ...

Full-field optical coherence microscopy (FFOCM) is an interferometric technique for obtaining wide-field microscopic images deep within scattering biological samples. FFOCM has primarily been implemented in the 0.8 mum wavelength range with silicon-based cameras, which may limit penetration when imaging human tissue. In this paper, we demonstrate FFOCM at the wavelength range of 0.9 - 1.4 mum, ...

Wide-field interferometric microscopy techniques have demonstrated their utility in sensing minute changes in the optical path length as well as visualization of sub-diffraction-limited nanoparticles. In this work, we demonstrate enhanced signal levels for nanoparticle detection by pupil function engineering in wide-field common-path interferometric microscopy. We quantify the improvements in n...