Enhanced adaptive focusing through semi-transparent media
Abstract
Adaptive optics can focus light through opaque media by compensating the random phase delay acquired while crossing a scattering curtain. The technique is commonly exploited in many fields, including astrophysics, microscopy, biomedicine and biology. A turbid lens has the capability of producing foci with a resolution higher than conventional optics, however it has a fundamental limit: to obtain a sharp focus one has to introduce a strongly scattering medium in the optical path. Indeed a tight focusing needs strong scattering and, as a consequence, high resolution focusing is obtained only for weakly transmitting samples. Here we describe a novel method allowing to obtain highly concentrated optical spots even by introducing a minimum amount of scattering in the beam path with semi-transparent materials. By filtering the pseudo-ballistic components of the transmitted beam we are able to experimentally overcome the limits of the adaptive focus resolution, gathering light on a spot with a diameter which is one third of the original speckle correlation function.
- Publication:
-
Scientific Reports
- Pub Date:
- December 2015
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1506.06886
- Bibcode:
- 2015NatSR...517406D
- Keywords:
-
- Physics - Optics
- E-Print:
- 13 pages, 4 figures