When measuring with light, the lateral extent of the structures that can be resolved by an optical imaging system is fundamentally diffraction limited. Overcoming this limitation is a topic of great ...

Attempts to break the diffraction limit with 'super lenses' have all hit the hurdle of extreme visual losses. Now physicists have shown a new pathway to achieve superlensing with minimal losses, ...

Using a tiny, spherical glass lens sandwiched between two brass plates, the 17th-century Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to officially describe red blood cells and sperm cells ...

To unravel the complexities of biological phenomena, scientists have long relied on microscopy to visualize the intricate details of their specimens, including tissue architecture, cell morphology, ...

Since the first microscope was invented in 1595 by a Dutch father-son team Hans and Zacharias Janssen 1, optical objectives have developed rapidly with improved performance in aberration correction, ...

Infrared (IR) microscopy is a powerful analytical technique for the investigation of chemically and spatially inhomogeneous samples in point-and-shoot scenarios, via scanning spectroscopy approaches, ...

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have unveiled a planar optical device that significantly enhances the capabilities of dark-field microscopy, achieving ...

Standard optical microscopes have surrendered their once dominant position at the forefront of scientific research to more advanced tools. As we delve deeper into the microscopic world, photons just ...

A new atom camera uses one ultracold rubidium atom to map light intensity and polarization with spatial resolution below 100 nanometers. (Nanowerk News) Researchers in Japan have turned a single, ...