The objective of this program is to (1) demonstrate a compact and potentially cost effective fiber device that will be a drop-in replacement for the complex optics that are susceptible to thermal and environmental drifts in today's nanoscale microscopes operating on the principle of stimulated emission and spatial depletion; and (2) design a next generation fiber capable of incorporating all optical components of the aforementioned bulk microscope to realize endoscopic implementations of nanoscale imaging systems.
The intellectual merit of this program is the realization that optical fibers can be specially designed to support orbital angular momentum carrying vortex beams, which lead to unprecedented multicolor control of the optical beam shape that exits the fiber and impinges on a sample. This development, combined with microscopy principles enabling super-resolution with complex beams, would lead to the first compact, alignment-free all-fiber imaging system capable of 20-50 nm resolution.
The broader impacts of this program are twofold: (1) Developing minimally-invasive technologies that can image, at the nanoscale, cellular, subcellular, molecular, and genetic processes in living organisms, which would significantly advance our understanding of human pathobiology; (2) Optical vortices form one of the most visually appealing beam patterns, resembling spirals whose physics is related to tornado-formation, and their manipulation with fibers enables developing curricula for a diverse array of students ranging from high-schools to graduate-schools, which would help attract more US talent to the disciplines of science, engineering and mathematics.
