Beating Abbe diffraction limit in confocal microscopy via non-classical photon statistics

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate quantum enhanced resolution in confocal fluorescence microscopy exploiting the non-classical photon statistics of single nitrogen-vacancy colour centres in diamond. By developing a general model of super-resolution based on the direct sampling of the kth-order autocorrelation function of the photoluminescence signal, we show the possibility, in some cases, to resolve in principle arbitrarily close emitting centers.