Optical microscopy for measuring tapered fibers beyond the diffraction limit

We describe a technique that allows the improvement of the resolution of optical microscopes for nanofiber measurements beyond the diffraction limit. It can be readily implemented on any microscope. We demonstrated it by measuring tapered fibers radii from 0.4 to 4 µm with a resolution below the diffraction limit, from a few nanometers up to 50 nm in the worst case, depending on the radii. This technique is a non-contact measurement with the microscope objective placed a few centimeters from the nanofiber. We acquire the experimental diffraction pattern by scanning the object plane of the microscope system, upstream and downstream the nanofiber. We compare this experimental diffraction pattern to a bank of all the simulated patterns for all the radii. The radius of the simulated diffraction pattern that best matches to the experimental one is the sought radius.