Picophotonic localization metrology beyond thermal fluctuations

Abstract

Despite recent tremendous progress in optical imaging and metrology,
there remains a substantial resolution gap between atomic-scale
transmission electron microscopy and optical techniques. Is optical imaging
and metrology of nanostructures exhibiting Brownian motion possible
with such resolution, beyond thermal fluctuations? Here we report on an
experiment in which the average position of a nanowire with a thermal
oscillation amplitude of ∼150 pm is resolved in single-shot measurements
with subatomic precision of 92 pm, using light at a wavelength of λ = 488 nm,
providing an example of such sub-Brownian metrology with ∼λ/5,300
precision. To localize the nanowire, we employ a deep-learning analysis of
the scattering of topologically structured light, which is highly sensitive
to the nanowire’s position. This non-invasive metrology with absolute
errors down to a fraction of the typical size of an atom, opens a range of
opportunities to study picometre-scale phenomena with light.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jun-Yu Ou: orcid.org/0000-0001-8028-6130

ORCID for Jie Xu: orcid.org/0000-0002-8421-5097

ORCID for Kevin F. MacDonald: orcid.org/0000-0002-3877-2976

ORCID for Nikolai Zheludev: orcid.org/0000-0002-1013-6636

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