Abstract
Coherent Diffractive Imaging (CDI) is an algorithmic imaging technique where intricate features are reconstructed from measurements of the freely diffracting intensity pattern. An important goal of such lensless imaging methods is to study the structure of molecules that cannot be crystallized. Ideally, one would want to perform CDI at the highest achievable spatial resolution and in a single-shot measurement such that it could be applied to imaging of ultrafast events. However, the resolution of current CDI techniques is limited by the diffraction limit, hence they cannot resolve features smaller than one half the wavelength of the illuminating light. Here, we present sparsity-based single-shot subwavelength resolution CDI: algorithmic reconstruction of subwavelength features from far-field intensity patterns, at a resolution several times better than the diffraction limit. This work paves the way for subwavelength CDI at ultrafast rates, and it can considerably improve the CDI resolution with X-ray free-electron lasers and high harmonics.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. A.S. thanks the Leopoldina—the German Academy of Natural Sciences for financial support (grant LPDS 2009-13). The research of O.C., E.B. and P.S. was supported by the Legacy Heritage Science Initiative Program (‘MORASHA’) of the Israel Science Foundation.
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Szameit, A., Shechtman, Y., Osherovich, E. et al. Sparsity-based single-shot subwavelength coherent diffractive imaging. Nature Mater 11, 455–459 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3289
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3289
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