Quantum entanglement for optical lithography and microscopy beyond the Rayleigh limit
Sean J. Bentley, Robert W. Boyd, Elna M. Nagasako, Girish Saran Agarwal · 2002
Summary form only given. Recently, Boto et al. (see Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 85, p. 2773, 2000) showed that using N entangled photons and an N-photon responsive lithographic recording medium, one could potentially write lithographic gratings with a resolution that is N times better than the classical Rayleigh criterion. An anticipated experimental difficulty is that such beams are weak, yet strong fields are needed to excite the N-photon absorption process. For the case of N=2, which was described in detail by Boto et al., we propose a method to overcome this problem. We also propose to use this idea "in reverse" to perform microscopy with better resolution than aloowed by the Rayleigh limit.