Confocal nonlinear optical microscopy for high-resolution measurement of absorptive objects.
We demonstrate a new scheme to enhance the spatial resolution of a confocal optical microscope. Our scheme improves the spatial resolution in the direction of the optical axis. The confocal optical microscope, by use of a four-wave mixing geometry, can obtain optical information about weakly absorptive objects with organic dyes. Owing to the third-order nonlinear dependence of absorptive objects, the optical signal is confined to the focal region of the focusing incident beam.
Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Hamamatsu, 432-8561, Japan. tdcegam@ipc.shizuoka.ac.jp
Chikara
C
Egami
Naoki
N
Kobayashi
Yoshimasa
Y
Kawata
Minoru
M
Masaki