The Rayleigh limit has so far applied to all microscopy techniques that rely on linear optical interaction and detection in the far field. Here we demonstrate that detecting the light emitted by an object in higher-order transverse electromagnetic modes (TEMs) can help achieving sub-Rayleigh precision for a variety of microscopy-related tasks. Using optical heterodyne detection in TEM01, we measure the position of coherently and incoherently emitting objects to within 0.0015 and 0.012 of the Rayleigh limit, respectively, and determine the distance between two incoherently emitting objects positioned within 0.28 of the Rayleigh limit with a precision of 0.019 of the Rayleigh limit. Heterodyne detection in multiple higher-order TEMs enables full imaging with resolution significantly below the Rayleigh limit in a way that is reminiscent of quantum tomography of optical states.

High-power supercontinuum spanning over more than an octave was generated using a high power femtosecond fiber laser amplifier and a multicore nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Long multicore PCFs (as long as 20 m in our experiments) are shown to enable supercontinuum generation in an isolated fundamental supermode, with the manifold of other PCF modes suppressed due to the strong evanescent fields coupling between the cores, providing a robust 5.4 W coherent supercontinuum output with a high spatial and spectral quality within the range of wavelengths from 500 to 1700 nm.

We seek to design experimentally feasible broadband, temporally multiplexed optical quantum memory with near-term applications to telecom bands. Specifically, we devise dispersion compensation (DC) for an impedance-matched narrow-band quantum memory by exploiting Raman processes over two three-level atomic subensembles, one for memory and the other for DC. DC provides impedance matching over more than a full cavity linewidth. Combined with 1 s spin-coherence lifetime the memory could be capable of power efficiency exceeding 90% leading to 106 modes for temporal multiplexing. Our design could lead to significant multiplexing enhancement for quantum repeaters to be used for telecom quantum networks.

We show that, under certain circumstances, an optical field in a two-mode squeezed vacuum (TMSV) state can propagate through a lossy atomic medium without degradation or evolution. Moreover, the losses give rise to that state when a different state is initially injected into the medium. Such a situation emerges in a Λ-type atomic system, in which both optical transitions are driven by strong laser fields that are two-photon resonant with the respective signal modes. Then the interactions of the two signal modes with the ground-state atomic coherence interfere destructively, thereby ensuring the preservation of the TMSV with a particular squeezing parameter. This mechanism permits unified interpretation of recent experimental results and predicts new phenomena.