Imaging Without Limit, on Demand

A team at Columbia University has introduced a way to program a layered crystal in such a way that it is able to open doors to imaging capabilities beyond common limits, on demand. The technique exerts control over nanolight — light that is able to access the nanoscale — providing insight into the field of optical quantum information processing. Light can only be focused down to a certain level, referred to as the Abbe limit. At this point, to a traditional optical microscope, objects that are closer than this limit would appear as one. Under certain conditions, however, these rules can be broken, using van der Waals crystals; these crystals are layered and possess semiconductor properties that allow for on-demand optical...