Sub-diffraction-limit light field shaping through edge-singularity engineering
Abstract
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a technique for shaping the light field in the sub-diffraction regime. Our technique relies on carefully engineering a phase singularity that is distributed continuously along a transverse curve. We develop a polynomial function to effectively describe this singularity curve, which results in an arbitrary light pattern with a feature size considerably down to the deep sub-diffraction limit. We experimentally verify the theoretical framework by demonstrating different cases of edge-singularity engineering for shaping the Gaussian envelope into desired morphologies. Our demonstrations open a novel, to the best of our knowledge, pathway to shaping the light field at the sub-diffraction-limit regime, which can find potential applications in various fields including the super-resolution imaging and precision detection.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Advanced Optical Imaging Technologies
Random lasers and scattering media
Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Optics Letters
- Publisher
- Optica Publishing Group
- Volume
- 51
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 818–818
- Publication date
- 15 January 2026
- Language
- EN