Quantum enhanced superresolution microscopy

Far-field optical microscopy beyond the Abbe diffraction limit is already a reality. Yet, while Abbe’s theory was based on classical physics, quantum mechanical phenomena were only very recently used for improving the performance of microscopes. I will review progress in this arena, and show how we can harness quantum photon correlations to increase the resolution of an optical microscope. In particular, we increase the resolution of a standard confocal fourfold, with a twofold axial resolution increase by harnessing the quantum phenomenon of fluorescence antibunching and by its classical analog of fluorescence intermittency. As will be shown, the hardware and software advances required to make this an ubiquitous tool in bioimaging are becoming readily available, offering a unique potential pathway towards imaging with increased performance without sacrificing the simplicity and ease of use of the common microscope, and with potential applications in other fields of imaging and spectroscopy.