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arXiv · 1405.6480

Single particle microscopy with nanometer resolution

Georg Jacob·Karin Groot-Berning·Sebastian Wolf·Stefan Ulm·Luc Couturier·Ulrich G. Poschinger·Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler·Kilian Singer
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Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate nanoscopic transmission microscopy relying on a deterministic single particle source. This increases the signal-to-noise ratio with respect to conventional microscopy methods, which employ Poissonian particle sources. We use laser-cooled ions extracted from a Paul trap, and demonstrate remote imaging of transmissive objects with a resolution of 8.6 $\pm$ 2.0nm and a minimum two-sample deviation of the beam position of 1.5nm. Detector dark counts can be suppressed by 6 orders of magnitudes through gating by the extraction event. The deterministic nature of our source enables an information-gain driven approach to imaging. We demonstrate this by performing efficient beam characterization based on a Bayes experiment design method.

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Georg Jacob, Karin Groot-Berning, Sebastian Wolf, Stefan Ulm, Luc Couturier, Ulrich G. Poschinger, Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler, Kilian Singer. 2014-05-26. Single particle microscopy with nanometer resolution. https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.6480

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