Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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SYAD: Symposium SAMOP Dissertation-Prize 2015

SYAD 1: Symposium SAMOP Dissertation-Prize 2015

SYAD 1.4: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 12:30–13:00, C/HSW

Coherent ultrafast imaging in the extreme ultraviolet - from cancer cell classification to optical vortex generation for phase-structured illumination — •Michael Zürch — Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Institute of Optics and Quantumelectronics, Jena, Germany

According to Ernst Abbe, the resolution of an ideal imaging system is limited by the wavelength of the illuminating light source, which is in the order of 1µm for visible light. Recent progress in laser physics led to the development of table-top laser driven high harmonic generation sources emitting coherent radiation in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) with sufficient photon flux for coherent imaging. The typical illumination wavelengths in the order of a few tens of nanometers turn microscopy into nanoscopy. In this talk we will report on our recent progress in coherent high-resolution imaging, reaching sub-wavelength resolution close to the Abbe limit. As a first application of such table-top XUV microscopes, we demonstrated a novel scheme to classify breast cancer cells based on their specific coherent XUV diffraction pattern. Intriguingly, this method allows distinguishing even cancer cells that just exhibit different cell expression profiles. This may soon speed up cancer diagnosis and allow monitoring the treatment more accurately. For pushing the imaging resolution even further, experimental findings for producing phase structured illumination in the XUV by generating an optical vortex beam will be discussed. Such beams may soon allow XUV super-resolution microscopy and spectroscopy of electronically forbidden transitions.