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Sparsity-based single-shot subwavelength coherent diffractive imaging

Nature Materials volume 11, pages 455–459 (2012)Cite this article

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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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Figure 1: Reconstruction of two-dimensional subwavelength information.
Figure 2: Truncation of the information by the transfer function.
Figure 3: Reconstruction of an irregular arrangement of two-dimensional subwavelength holes.

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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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Author notes

  1. A. Szameit, Y. Shechtman and E. Osherovich: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department and Solid State Institute, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

    A. Szameit, Y. Shechtman, E. Bullkich, P. Sidorenko, S. Gazit, O. Cohen & M. Segev

  2. Institute of Applied Physics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany

    A. Szameit, S. Steiner & E. B. Kley

  3. Computer Science Department, Technion, 32000 Haifa, Israel

    E. Osherovich, M. Zibulevsky & I. Yavneh

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

    H. Dana & S. Shoham

  5. Department of Electrical Engineering, Microelectronics Research Center, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

    T. Cohen-Hyams

  6. Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

    Y. C. Eldar

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All authors contributed significantly to the work presented in this paper.

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Correspondence to M. Segev.

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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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