Super-resolution Airy disk microscopy of individual color centers in diamond

TL;DR

This paper introduces Super-resolution Airy disk Microscopy (SAM), a technique that enhances resolution in confocal microscopes without specialized optics, enabling nanoscale imaging and control of individual color centers in diamond.

Contribution

The authors present a novel super-resolution microscopy method compatible with standard confocal microscopes, achieving over 14-fold resolution improvement without specialized optical components.

Findings

Achieved 16.9 nm spatial resolution with SAM.

Enabled control of closely spaced NV center spins.

Demonstrated imaging of NV centers below the diffraction limit.

Abstract

Super-resolution imaging techniques enable nanoscale microscopy in fields such as physics, biology, and chemistry. However, many super-resolution techniques require specialized optical components, such as a helical-phase mask. We present a novel technique, Super-resolution Airy disk Microscopy (SAM) that can be used in a standard confocal microscope without any specialized optics. We demonstrate this technique, in combination with ground state depletion, to image and control nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in bulk diamond below the diffraction limit. A greater than 14-fold improvement in resolution compared to the diffraction limit is achieved, corresponding to a spatial resolution of 16.9(8) nm for a 1.3 NA microscope with 589 nm light. We make use of our enhanced spatial resolution to control the spins states of individual NV centers separated from each other by less than the diffraction limit, including pairs sharing the same orientation that are indistinguishable with a conventional electron spin resonance measurement.