Abstract

We show that, for optical systems whose point spread functions exhibit isolated zeros, the information one can gain about the separation between two incoherent point light sources does not scale quadratically with the separation (which is the distinctive dependence causing Rayleigh’s curse) but only linearly. Moreover, the dominant contribution to the separation information comes from regions in the vicinity of these zeros. We experimentally confirm this idea, demonstrating significant superresolution using natural or artificially created spectral doublets.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

Tempering Rayleigh’s curse with PSF shaping

Martin Paúr, Bohumil Stoklasa, Jai Grover, Andrej Krzic, Luis L. Sánchez-Soto, Zdeněk Hradil, and Jaroslav Řeháček
Optica 5(10) 1177-1180 (2018)

Quantum Fisher information with coherence

Zdeněk Hradil, Jaroslav Řeháček, Luis Sánchez-Soto, and Berthold-Georg Englert
Optica 6(11) 1437-1440 (2019)

Development of a beam propagation method to simulate the point spread function degradation in scattering media

Xiaojun Cheng, Yunzhe Li, Jerome Mertz, Sava Sakadžić, Anna Devor, David A. Boas, and Lei Tian
Opt. Lett. 44(20) 4989-4992 (2019)

Half-ring point spread functions

Jacob H. Wirth, Abbie T. Watnik, and Grover A. Swartzlander
Opt. Lett. 45(8) 2179-2182 (2020)

Pincushion point-spread function for computer-generated holography

David Blinder, Tobias Birnbaum, and Peter Schelkens
Opt. Lett. 47(8) 2077-2080 (2022)