Möllenstedt biprism based shearing ptychographic iterative engine method

Since classical lensless ptychographic iterative engine (PIE) method can retrieve both the sample amplitude and phase distributions with high resolution, fast convergence speed and large field of view, it has been widely used in various applications especially in short wavelength imaging such as X-ray or electron beam fields. However, traditional PIE often requires mechanical illumination or sample scanning, inevitably complicating the imaging system. In order to simplify its system, we design a Möllenstedt biprism based shearing PIE method, which essentially utilizes the relative motion of the two deflected waves obtained by loading different voltages on the Möllenstedt biprism to scan the sample instead of the mechanical transverse scan in the classical PIE method. Numerical computations and experiments with visible light prove that the shearing PIE method can extract the sample amplitude and phase distributions from multiple shearing diffraction patterns with high accuracy and fast convergence speed even without knowing the precise Möllenstedt biprism information. Our results show that Möllenstedt biprism based shearing PIE is suitable for quantitative short wavelength imaging.