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Microscope Design Uses Resonator to "Store" Light, Avoid Sample Degradation





In photography, taking a detailed image requires a lot of light. But in microscopy, too much light is often harmful to the sample, such as when imaging sensitive biological structures or investigating quantum particles. The aim is therefore to gather as much information as possible about the object under observation with a given amount of light.

In collaboration with the University of Vienna and the University of Siegen, researchers at TU Wien have developed a novel trick to achieve this: storing the light in a resonator in which the sample is also located. This allows them to obtain a clearer signal than with other methods.

“In a normal microscope, the light hits the sample once and then enters a lens,” said Maximilian Prüfer, who led the study as part of his fellowship at the Atomic Research Institute of TU Wien. “In our microscope, we place the sample in an optical resonator — between two mirrors.”

To turn this resonator into a microscope, the team developed an unusual experimental setup with additional lenses: After the light beam has passed through the sample, it is guided in a circle and hits the sample again. “Now the sample is illuminated again, but not with a normal, uniform beam of light as in the beginning, but with a beam of light that already contains the image of the sample, so to speak,” said Oliver Lueghamer of TU Wien, who built the microscope as part of his master's thesis.

Similar to a stamp that is pressed several times on the same spot, producing a clearly visible image even with faint ink, the image of the sample becomes clearer and clearer as it completes several rounds in the microscope.

Both theoretical calculations, which were developed in collaboration with Thomas Juffmann of the University of Vienna and Stefan Nimmrichter of the University of Siegen, and experiments show that this method provides more information than other microscopy techniques at a given light intensity. “The key figure is the signal-to-noise ratio,” said Maximilian Prüfer. “This ratio is better here than with other methods due to multiple scattering with the same disturbance of the sample.”

However, the practical suitability of the developed instrument and method also depends on how susceptible it is to disturbances. “When using optical resonators, as we do, it is often important to keep their length extremely constant,” Prüfer said.

“Normally, you have to go make a great effort to ensure that the distance between the two mirrors varies only minimally, otherwise the desired effect is lost. With our method, however, this is not the case.”

The distance between the mirrors can also show a certain instability without the enhancement disappearing. “This is important because it means that the method not only works in theory, but can also be used in practice with manageable effort,” Prüfer said.

One of the goals of the new microscopy technique is to image ultra-cold Bose-Einstein condensates and thereby study their quantum physical behavior.

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