Adaptive Optical Imaging with Entangled Photons

TL;DR

This paper introduces a guidestar-free adaptive optics method using entangled photons to correct aberrations in label-free microscopy, outperforming conventional AO especially in defocus correction, and advancing quantum microscopy capabilities.

Contribution

It presents a novel adaptive optics approach leveraging entangled photon correlations that is independent of the sample and imaging modality.

Findings

Better correction of aberrations than conventional AO

Effective correction of defocus aberrations

Enhancement of quantum microscopy techniques

Abstract

Adaptive optics (AO) has revolutionized imaging in {fields} from astronomy to microscopy by correcting optical aberrations. In label-free microscopes, however, conventional AO faces limitations due to the absence of guidestar and the need to select an optimization metric specific to the sample and imaging process. Here, we propose an AO approach leveraging correlations between entangled photons to directly correct the point spread function (PSF). This guidestar-free method is independent of the specimen and imaging modality. We demonstrate the imaging of biological samples in the presence of aberrations using a bright-field imaging setup operating with a source of spatially-entangled photon pairs. Our approach performs better than conventional AO in correcting specific aberrations, particularly those involving significant defocus. Our work improves AO for label-free microscopy and could play a major role in the development of quantum microscopes.