Compound Super-oscillation Lens for Reflective Confocal Imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel compound super-oscillation lens (SOL) that enables reflective confocal imaging with ultra-high resolution and minimal sidebands, surpassing conventional methods without additional lenses.

Contribution

A new compound SOL design combining outer and inner lenses to achieve simultaneous focusing and collection for enhanced super-resolution imaging.

Findings

Achieves resolution below 0.34λ/NA

Nearly negligible side lobe ratio and no side bands

Outperforms conventional confocal microscopy

Abstract

The super-oscillation lens (SOL) can achieve super-resolution focusing but have to trade-off with weaker hotspots and higher sidebands. We propose a single compound SOL to achieve reflective confocal imaging in principle without additional lenses. The designed SOL consists of an outer lens and an inner lens which play the role of focusing lens and collective lens respectively. As a result, focusing and collecting functions can be simultaneously realized. The improved system can achieve excellent imaging performance with an ultra-high resolution (<0.34{\lambda}/NA, NA stands for numerical aperture), and almost negligible side lobe ratio and no side bands, which proved superior to conventional laser scanning confocal microscopy and single SOL. This technology can be attractive for a variety of applications in super-resolution imaging and biomedical sciences.