Active and Adaptive Optics in Microscopy

Dr Alexander Jesacher

Dept for Engineering Science, University of Oxford

3:30 pm Friday, 20 March 2009, EN101 (Ground Floor, EN Building), Hawthorn.

Adaptive optical elements such as deformable membrane mirrors and liquid crystal spatial light modulators provide a large degree of flexibility in optics. Due to their high light efficiency as well as their wavelength and polarization independence, deformable membrane mirrors are often used for correcting aberrations in microscopic imaging. It will be illustrated how one can derive schemes for efficient wavefront-sensorless aberration correction. Practical examples of different imaging modalities are presented. The second part of the talk is about how the flexibility of optical traps (“optical tweezers”) and widefield microscopes can be enlarged by the implementation of spatial light modulators (SLM). Integrated into the pathway of a widefield microscope, an SLM can act as versatile phase contrast filter. It will be explained how established methods such as phase-contrast and darkfield can be emulated, and how isotropic edge-enhancement of samples can be achieved with a phase-vortex filter function.

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