Interferometric imaging of reflective micro-objects in the presence of strong aberrations

Abstract

Some imaging techniques reduce the effect of optical aberrations either by detecting and actively compensating for them or by utilizing interferometry. A microscope based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer has been recently introduced to allow obtaining sharp images of light-transmitting objects in the presence of strong aberrations. However, the method is not capable of imaging microstructures on opaque substrates. In this work, we use a Michelson interferometer to demonstrate imaging of reflecting and back-scattering objects on any substrate with micrometer-scale resolution. The system is remarkably insensitive to both deterministic and random aberrations that can completely destroy the object's intensity image.

Near-field spatial coherence of structured incoherent optical sources

“…These applications include optical imaging, sensing and detection, holography, phase sensitive microscopy, and other techniques to study, analyze, and use partially coherent light [3][4][5][6][7][8]. As an example, spatial coherence lies in the core of many correlation-based imaging techniques, such as full-field optical coherence tomography [4,9], aberration-insensitive interferometric microscopy [10,11], and ghost imaging [12,13]. Moreover, optical beams with designed spatial coherence have been shown to exhibit unusual propagation characteristics, such as self-healing and shape preservation in turbulent atmosphere [14,15].…”