Quantum Super-resolution Imaging in Fluorescence Microscopy

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Quantum Super-resolution Imaging in Fluorescence
Microscopy
Osip Schwartz, Dan Oron, Jonathan M. Levitt, Ron
Tenne, Stella Itzhakov and Dan Oron
Dept. of Physics of Complex Systems Weizmann
Institute of Science, Israel
FRISNO 12, Ein Gedi (February 2013)
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Microscopy and resolution
Resolution of far-field optical microscopes is
limited by about half wavelength. (Ernst Abbe,
1873)

• Workarounds
• Nonlinear optical methods use nonlinear optical
  response to produce narrower point spread
  function
• Stochastic methods use fluorophores turning on
  and off randomly
• Quantum optics?

• Multi-photon interference Afek et al.,
  Science 328 (2010)
• Walther et al., Nature 429 (2004)
• Entangled images Boyer et al., Science 321
  (2008)
• Sub shot noise imaging Brida et al., Nat.
  Photonics 4 (2010)
• Resolution enhancement?

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Quantum super-resolution

• Quantum Limits on Optical Resolution
• Wolf equations for two-photon light
• Quantum Imaging beyond the Diffraction Limit by
  Optical Centroid Measurements
• Quantum spatial superresolution by optical
  centroid measurements
• Quantum imaging with incoherent photons,
• Sub-Rayleigh quantum imaging using single-photon
  sources
• Sub-Rayleigh-diffraction-bound quantum imaging,
• Sub-Rayleigh Imaging via N-Photon Detection,

Kolobov, Fabre, PRL2000 Saleh et al., PRL
2005 M.Tsang PRL 2009 Shin et al., PRL 2011 Thiel
et al., PRL 2007 Thiel et al., PRA
2009 Giovannetti, PRA 2009 Guerrieri et al., PRL
2010
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Quantum emitters
Classical light
What if we had an emitter that would always emit
photon pairs?
S.W. Hell et al., Bioimaging (1995)
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Multi-photon detection microscopy
Point spread function h2phot(x) h2(x)
Spatial distribution of photon pairs carries high
spatial frequency information (up to double
resolution)
Similarly, in N-photon detection microscopy
hNphot(x) hN(x)
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Antibunching microscopy
Number of photons emitted after excitation
Observations of antibunching
Organic dyes W. Ambrose et al. (1997) Quantum
dots B. Lounis et al. (2000). NV centers R.
Brouri et al. (2000).
Instead of actual photon pairs, consider
missing pairs.
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Antibunching-induced correlations
Two adjacent detectors in the image plane
 
 
 
For multiple fluorophores
For individual fluorophore
 
 
 
 
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Emitters
Fluorescence saturation
CdSe / ZnSe / ZnS quantum dots
Schwartz et al.,ACS Nano 6 (2012)
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At 1 kHz
Schwartz et al.,ACS Nano 6 (2012)
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Photon counting with a CCD
arXiv1212.6003
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Computing correlations
2nd order
 
Quantifies the missing pairs
3rd order
 

• compute correlations for all pixel configurations
• Fourier-interpolate the resulting images
• Sum the interpolated images

Missing 3-photon events (except those due to
missing pairs, already accounted for)
arXiv1212.6003
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Antibunching with a CCD
Classical signal
Quantum dot
Second order autocorrelation function g(2)(t)ltn(
t)n(t t)gt
t2, ms
t, ms
t, ms
Third order g(3)(t1, t2) ltn(t)n(tt1)n(t t2)gt
t2, ms
t1, ms
t1, ms
arXiv1212.6003
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Fluorescence image
arXiv1212.6003
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Fluorescence image
2nd order antibunching
arXiv1212.6003
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Fluorescence image
Resolution 271 nm FWHM
2nd order antibunching
216 nm FWHM (x1.26)
3rd order antibunching
181 nm FWHM (x1.50)
arXiv1212.6003
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Optical sectioning
Defocused image of a quantum dot
Optical signal integrated over the field of view
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Summary

• Far-field super-resolution imaging demonstrated
  by using quantum properties of light naturally
  present in fluorescence microscopy
• The experiment was performed with commercially
  available equipment, at room temperature, with
  commonly used quantum dot fluorophores
• With further development of detector technology,
  antibunching imaging may become feasible as a
  practical imaging method

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The team
Jonathan M. Levitt
Stella Itzhakov
Zvicka Deutsch
Dan Oron
Ron Tenne
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Superresolved images
Reconstructed high resolution images
Regular (photon counting) image
Second order correlations
Third order correlations
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Superresolved images
arXiv1212.6003
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Superresolved images
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Superresolved images
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Quantum super-resolution
Conceptual difficulty an absorptive grating with
sub-wavelength period acts as an attenuator for
every photon
 
 

• Transmitted light contains no information on the
  grating phase or period
• Any linear absorber mask is a superposition of
  gratings
• High spatial frequency components of the mask are
  lost