Novel scanning probe microscopy (SPM) spectroscopic techniques are currently receiving much attention. The increasing number of spectroscopic techniques, when combined with the high spatial resolution that is attainable with SPM, makes it possible to probe a large range of material characteristics on the nanoscopic scale. The ability to probe samples on the nanoscale with femtosecond time resol...

Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Thesis directed by Professor Markus Raschke Scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) is a powerful technique for measuring spectroscopic properties of materials with s...

The method of fluorescence resonance energy transfer scanning near-field optical microscopy (FRET SNOM) consists in the separation of a FRET pair between an SNOM tip and a sample. The donor (or acceptor) centre is located at the tip apex and scanned in the vicinity of a sample while acceptor fluorescence (or donor-fluorescence quenching) is detected. It is shown that the spatial resolution for ...

We demonstrate the application of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) for mapping optical near-fields with nanometer resolution, limited only by the AFM probe geometry. By detecting the optical force between a gold coated AFM probe and its image dipole on a glass substrate, we profile the electric field distributions of tightly focused laser beams with different polarizations. The experimentally reco...

Correlative optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combines two techniques enabling the use both optical and electronic analysis techniques on the same sample. For example, optical techniques, such as fluorescence staining, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) could in principle be used with SEM and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) [1]. Optical microscopy provides ef...

A comparison of algorithms for depth-of-field extension in the particular field of digital holographic microscopy is presented. Using the reconstruction properties of holography, a simple 3D reconstruction method from a single hologram is deducted. ©2009 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (090.1995) Digital holography; (100.6890) Three-dimensional image processing; (180.0180) Microscopy

Optical sectioning provides three-dimensional (3D) information in biological tissues. However, most imaging techniques implemented with optical sectioning are either slow or deleterious to live tissues. Here, we present a simple design for wide-field multiphoton microscopy, which provides optical sectioning at a reasonable frame rate and with a biocompatible laser dosage. The underlying mechani...

Here we suggest and explore theoretically an idea for a far-field scanless optical microscopy with a subdiffraction resolution. We exploit the special dispersion characteristics of an anisotropic metamaterial crystal that is obliquely cut at its output plane, or has a curved output surface, in order to map the input field distribution onto the crystal’s output surface with a compressed angular ...