Optical phase contrast microscopy and cryo-electron microscopy are widely used in the study of cells and proteins, respectively. In both techniques, a specimen imparts a phase shift on the probe (photons or electrons), which can be measured using various interferometric techniques.
In this talk I will briefly discuss the physical basics and limits of phase microscopy, and will show ways how to improve on current techniques using wave-front shaping, cavity or quantum enhanced measurements. I will demonstrate how wave-front shaping can enable phase contrast imaging with optimized sensitivity all across the field of view 1, and how multi-passing the probe particles through a sample can be used for high sensitivity / low damage imaging 2. The latter could potentially allow for cryo-electron microscopy with unprecedented resolution 3.
Finally, I will discuss how one of the techniques we developed can be used for gating images on the nanosecond scale, which enables fluorescence lifetime imaging with single molecule sensitivity 4.
1. Juffmann, T., de los Ríos Sommer, A. & Gigan, S. Local Optimization of Wave-fronts for optimal sensitivity PHase Imaging (LowPhi). Opt. Commun. 454, 124484 (2020).
2. Juffmann, T., Klopfer, B. B., Frankort, T. L. I. I., Haslinger, P. & Kasevich, M. A. Multi-pass microscopy. Nat. Commun. 7, 12858 (2016).
3. Juffmann, T. et al. Multi-pass transmission electron microscopy. Sci. Rep. 7, 1699 (2017).
4. Bowman, A. J., Klopfer, B. B., Juffmann, T. & Kasevich, M. A. Electro-optic imaging enables efficient wide-field fluorescence lifetime microscopy. Nat. Commun. 10, 4561 (2019).
