Endoscopic STED Nanoscopy with Optical FIber Vortices

该计划的目标是（1）展示一种紧凑且具有潜在成本效益的光纤装置，该装置将是当今基于受激发射和空间耗尽原理的纳米级显微镜中易受热漂移和环境漂移影响的复杂光学器件的替代品;以及（2）设计能够结合上述体显微镜的所有光学部件的下一代光纤，以实现纳米级成像系统的内窥镜实现。该方案的优点是实现了光纤可以被专门设计成支持携带涡旋光束的轨道角动量，这导致对离开光纤并撞击在样品上的光束形状的前所未有的可调控制。这一发展，结合显微镜原理，使超分辨率与复杂的光束，将导致第一个紧凑的，无干扰的全光纤成像系统，能够20-50纳米的分辨率。该计划的更广泛影响是双重的：（1）开发微创技术，可以在纳米尺度上对活生物体的细胞、亚细胞、分子和遗传过程进行成像，这将大大促进我们对人类病理学的理解;（2）光学涡旋形成最具视觉吸引力的光束图案之一，类似于其物理学与龙卷风形成有关的螺旋，他们对纤维的操纵使他们能够为从高中到研究生院的各种学生开发课程，这将有助于吸引更多的美国人才进入科学，工程和数学学科。

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.