KEYWORDS: Near field scanning optical microscopy, Polarization, Near field optics, Near field, Nonlinear optics, Imaging systems, Wave plates, Structured light
Near-field optical characterization techniques are essential in nanophotonics research. Conventional methods typically rely on a nanoprobe for point-scanning the light field, which requires strict detection conditions and leads to long imaging durations.We present a novel near-field optical characterization system based on nonlinear effects. Using the nonlinear four-wave mixing effect, we can extract near-field polarizations through far-field imaging. This system features a broad field of view, scanning-less and real-time imaging capabilities, allowing for instantaneous characterization of evanescent fields like surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). By employing a phase profile on a spatial light modulator (SLM), we can dynamically control the SPP field without nanostructures or nanofabrication. The scanning-less imaging simplifies nearfield characterization, achieving an image frame rate of about 5 frames per second with a standard CCD. This research aims to enhance the characterization of innovative structured light fields and improve understanding of light-structure interactions at the micro/nanoscale.
Three-Dimensional Displacement Sensing has a very important demand in research fields such as nanomanufacturing, lithography, and microscopic imaging. Optical displacement sensing has received considerable attention in recent years due to the advantages of non-contact and high-precision, etc. However, traditional methods that use optical phase or polarization singularities to obtain position information are affected by the intensity of light, making the detection difficult. Here, we propose a nanoparticle on waveguide film structure that utilizes the nanoparticle as a near-field probe to achieve three-dimensional displacement sensing. The scattering light of the nanoparticle excites the resonance modes of the waveguide structure and projects the generated signal to the far field. The far-field distribution has a strong angular correlation, and by detecting the relative strength of the corresponding angle in the far-field distribution, it is possible to achieve three-dimensional displacement sensing. We have theoretically verified this idea through the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The three-dimensional displacement sensor implemented by this structure may be applied in nanometrology, nanofabrication, and super-resolution microscopes.
The demand for high capacity and integration in modern optical communication technology is becoming prominent. Orbital angular momentum (OAM) plays an important role in optical communication. However, there are still challenges to further expand the flexibility and capacity of optical communication in the axial direction. Here, we propose a single-layer liquid crystal device (LCD) to realize the generation of optical vortex (OV) array with arbitrary topological charge in axial multiplane, which can be applied in optical communications based on highly integrated device. The phase of the target OV array is weighted and superimposed to obtain the phase distribution of LCD. In order to obtain an OV array with uniform intensity, it is necessary to determine the optimal weight factor for each OV based on the introduced particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. In the experiment, a LCD with an effective aperture of 2 mm was processed. A CCD captures the OV array image, including two OV arrays at 200*λ (156μm) in front of and behind the focal point respectively. Then, the beam passes through the 4f system of the spatial light modulator with the phase distribution of the Damman vortex grating on the spectrum plane, and the topological charge of the two OV arrays can be detected by the CCD. Our results provide an approach that based on a single liquid crystal plate, OV arrays in multiple propagation planes are realized, in which the number of propagation planes and the position of each propagation plane relative to the back focal plane can be adjusted arbitrarily, and the number, order, and position of OVs in each propagation plane can also be adjusted arbitrarily to meet the application requirements in the field of short-distance optical communication.
KEYWORDS: Nanoparticles, Metals, Near field, Silver, Scattering, Polarization, Plasmonics, Light scattering, Near field scanning optical microscopy, Near field optics
Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) play an important role in modern nanophotonics due to their vectorial characteristics, subwavelength scale and field enhancement natures. Up to now, a great deal of advanced scheme has been proposed to character the intensity distributions of SPPs, it remains challenging to achieve the measurement of the transverse and longitudinal fields of SPPs simultaneously with the NSOM probe. Here, we develop a technique for sorting the transverse and longitudinal field distributions of SPPs simultaneously with a metal-nanoparticle-on-film structure. The metal-nanoparticle-on-film structure was introduced as a near-field probe to couple the SPPs fields signals into far-field, of which the angular distribution is intensely polarization correlation. The imaging of the transverse and longitudinal fields with high precision can be achieved by collecting and analyzing the scattering signals which are caused by the horizontal and perpendicular polarization. The idea was validated theoretically by characterizing a complex SPPs field with the finite difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The proposed method realizes transverse and longitudinal field sorting of SPP field, and is conducive to the further study of the physical properties of SPP fields, for instance transverse spin, spin-orbit interaction, etc.
We present a method of phase modulation on the incident beam of the optical system to obtain a super-resolution focused spin spot by a multibelt binary optical phase element. We investigate the focusing properties of various structured lights from three situations: vortex beam, vector beam, and scalar beam, including the azimuthally polarized optical vortex beam (APOV), radially polarized beam (RP) and circularly polarized beam (CP). Under the same numerical aperture and the premise of ensuring the longitudinal uniformity of the focused field, we optimize the belt spacing of the multibelt binary optical phase element to obtain the optimal solution for each beam by the simulated annealing algorithm. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the focused spot of the APOV is the smallest. And the focused spot of the RP is second smallest. Particularly, the modulated focused APOV has an extremely small spin spot with pure transverse polarization. Its spin texture is similar to that of the Bloch-type magnetic skyrmion in the central region without the modulation. This kind of focused spin spot super the diffraction limit has potential in the applications of super-resolution imaging, circular dichroism imaging, chiral imaging, and the screening and manipulation of chiral particles.
We propose that Deep Learning (DL) can be used to improve the performance of nonlinear structured illumination microscopy(NSIM) to enable it to reconstruct a super-resolution image with much less raw image frames. This allows for gentler super-resolution imaging at higher speeds and weakens phototoxicity in the NSIM imaging process. We validate our approach by super-resolution image reconstruction of simulated obtained data.
Phase, one of the remarkable freedoms of light, plays a critical role in optical information transmission and processing. A great number of methods for demodulating the phase of incident light have been reported recently. Here, we proposed an indirect method for demodulating the phase by using plasmonic metasurfaces. A linear relationship between the phase difference of incident light wave and the corresponding transmission spectra was obtained. The proposed method of phase demodulation has potential for a wide range of applications, such as on-chip information decoding, optical communication, optical imaging, and artificial intelligence, etc.
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