Through-focus scanning optical microscopy (TSOM) is a model-based optical metrology method that involves the scanning of a target through the focus of an optical microscope. Unlike a conventional optical microscope that directly extracts the diffraction-limited optical information from a single in-focus image, the TSOM method extracts nanometer scale sensitive information by matching the target TSOM data/image to reference TSOM data/images that are either experimentally or computationally collected. Therefore, the sensitivity and accuracy of the TSOM method strongly depends on the similarities between the conditions in which the target and reference TSOM images are taken or simulated, especially the lateral instability during through-focus scanning. As a remedy to the lateral instability, we proposed the application of adaptive optics to the through-focus scanning operation and initially developed a closed-loop system with a tip/tilt mirror and a Shack-Hartmann sensor, with which we were able to keep the plane position within peak-to-valley (PV) 33 nm. We then further developed a motion-free TSOM tool reducing the instability down to practically zero by the replacement of the tip/tilt mirror with a deformable mirror that performs through-focus scanning by deforming its mirror surface. The motion-free TSOM tool with a × 50 (NA 0.55) objective lens could provide a scanning range of up to ± 25 µm with a minimum step of 25 nm at a maximum update rate of 4 kHz. The tool was demonstrated to have a recognition accuracy of less then 4 nm for critical dimension (CD) values in the range of 60 ∼ 120 nm with a reference TSOM image library generated by a Fourier modal method matching various observations conditions.Full angular momentum states constitute a complete and higher state space of a photon, which are significant not only for fundamental study of light but also for practical applications utilizing cylindrical optics such as optical fibers. Here we propose and demonstrate a simple yet effective scheme of combining the spiral transformation with Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) metasurfaces for high-resolution sorting of full angular momentum states. The scheme is verified by successfully sorting full angular momentum states with 7 orbital angular momentum states and 2 spin angular momentum states via numerical simulations and experiments. We expect that our work paves the way for simple high-resolution sorting of full angular momentum states, which could be highly useful in both classical and quantum information systems.High-refractive-index nanoparticles (NPs), such as silicon NPs, were considered as effective carriers in their response to a magnetic field at optical frequencies. Such NPs play an important role in many state-of-the-art technologies in nano-optics. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/msab.html Although the resonance properties of these NPs when varying their structural parameters have been studied intensely in the past few years, their interaction with the underlying substrate has seldom been discussed, in particular, when the substrate is a waveguide structure that significantly modulates the optical responses of the NPs. We proposed and studied a selective magnetic coupling system comprising a Si-NP on a metal-dielectric waveguide (MDW). The MDW structure supports either a transverse electric (TE) or a transverse magnetic (TM) mode that induces a large polarization dependence in the magnetic resonance. A new manifestation of the optical spin Hall effect was demonstrated in which a vertical rotating magnetic dipole excites a TE-type waveguide mode with a specific unidirectional emission. Making use of this polarization response, we developed a scanning imaging system that can selectively map the transverse or longitudinal magnetic field component of a focused beam depending on the type of MDW used in the system. This selective magnetic resonance coupling system is expected to be valuable for studying the fundamental interactions between the magnetic field and matter and for developing related nano-applications.A scheme is proposed to generate stable light bullets (LBs) in a cold Rydberg atomic system with a parity-time (PT) symmetric potential, by utilizing electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Using an incoherent population pumping between two low-lying levels and spatial modulations of control and auxiliary laser fields, we obtain a two-dimensional (2D) periodic optical potential with PT symmetry. Based on PT symmetry potential and the long-range Rydberg-Rydberg atomic interaction, the system may support slow LBs with low light intensity. Further, it is found that the local and non-local nonlinear coefficients and PT-symmetric potential can be tuned and used to manipulate the behavior of LBs.Based on measuring the polarimetric parameters which contain specific physical information, polarimetric imaging has been widely applied to various fields. However, in practice, the noise during image acquisition could lead to the output of noisy polarimetric images. In this paper, we propose, for the first time to our knowledge, a learning-based method for polarimetric image denoising. This method is based on the residual dense network and can significantly suppress the noise in polarimetric images. The experimental results show that the proposed method has an evident performance on the noise suppression and outperforms other existing methods. Especially for the images of the degree of polarization and the angle of polarization, which are quite sensitive to the noise, the proposed learning-based method can well reconstruct the details flooded in strong noise.The d1-d2-d3-d4-d5 gradient-type spoof surface plasmons (SSP) grating was designed and found to exert an obvious effect on electric field localization. Two gradient-shaped planar ports were added to the bottom of this grating to form a gradient-type slotted SSP grating and achieve tight focusing and local electric field enhancement for a terahertz wave. The size of the focal spot was optimized to 0.01λ. The single-gradient-type slotted SSP grating was considered as a unit and arranged in one and two dimensions to generate a longitudinal focal line and square focal spots array. This did not only improve the resolution of terahertz imaging, but also simultaneously scan multiple focal spots to increase the speed of terahertz imaging. This work makes the manipulation of terahertz wave more flexible and efficient which has great potential in terahertz high-resolution near-field scanning imaging.