Picophotonic localization metrology beyond thermal fluctuations.
Tongjun LiuCheng-Hung ChiJun-Yu OuJie XuEng Aik ChanKevin F MacDonaldNikolay I ZheludevPublished in: Nature materials (2023)
Despite recent tremendous progress in optical imaging and metrology 1-6 , there remains a substantial resolution gap between atomic-scale transmission electron microscopy and optical techniques. Is optical imaging and metrology of nanostructures exhibiting Brownian motion possible with such resolution, beyond thermal fluctuations? Here we report on an experiment in which the average position of a nanowire with a thermal oscillation amplitude of ∼150 pm is resolved in single-shot measurements with subatomic precision of 92 pm, using light at a wavelength of λ = 488 nm, providing an example of such sub-Brownian metrology with ∼λ/5,300 precision. To localize the nanowire, we employ a deep-learning analysis of the scattering of topologically structured light, which is highly sensitive to the nanowire's position. This non-invasive metrology with absolute errors down to a fraction of the typical size of an atom, opens a range of opportunities to study picometre-scale phenomena with light.
Keyphrases
- high resolution
- electron microscopy
- high speed
- room temperature
- deep learning
- particulate matter
- air pollution
- heavy metals
- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
- single molecule
- mass spectrometry
- high frequency
- machine learning
- patient safety
- artificial intelligence
- quality improvement
- convolutional neural network
- living cells
- adverse drug
- simultaneous determination