What’s new in our Optical Modeling and Design Software?

Did you catch our recent webinar on the exciting outlook for fiber technologies in VirtualLab Fusion? Lots of new features will be coming soon – a new fiber-mode calculator, fiber component, and new fiber-coupling efficiency detectors – resulting in improved and even more user-friendly workflows. But while we wait for the new features to arrive in coming releases, there is already lots for you to enjoy in the current version! Check out the use cases linked below for some inspiration.

X-ray imaging is a valuable tool in a wide variety of applications, such as medical imaging and industrial inspection. In VirtualLab Fusion, we have successfully realized several well-known x-ray imaging systems, which can be used to explore the imaging properties of the setup in question, or to illustrate the special x-ray imaging principle. In this newsletter, we show two x-ray imaging experiments: (1) Using Kirkpatrick-Baez mirrors to create a nanometer-scale x-ray imaging spot; (2) Illustrating the phase-contrast x-ray imaging principle with a single grating interferometer.

Gratings, as test samples or as components of systems in their own right, can be applied in microscopy. For example, Ernst Abbe famously used a grating as the sample to investigate the resolution of a microscopy system. The magnified image of the grating is obtained at the image plane. Another example is that of Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM), which uses the demagnified image of the grating at the focal plane for illuminating the fluorescent samples [R. Heintzmann and C. Cremer, SPIE, 1999]. VirtualLab Fusion provides a straightforward way to model such systems in a fully vectorial manner. We demonstrate by applying different commercial microscopy lenses (Nikon) combined with gratings in VirtualLab Fusion.

Register now for our next webinars and save your seat.

Fiber Optics – 03 February
Flat Optics – 04 February

The microscopy imaging techniques are developed rapidly in recent decades. The PSF (Point Spread Function) is very often not an Airy disk at the image plane. A donut shape can be engineered when imaging a dipole source orientated along the longitudinal axis. We demonstrate in VirtualLab Fusion that different asymmetric PSFs, which are not Airy disks, are obtained when the orientation of the dipole source changes. Moreover, a double-helix PSF can be obtained by inserting a certain phase mask in the pupil plane of a microscopy system [Ginni Grover et al., Opt. Exp. 2012]. With such an engineered PSF, even a small defocus of the object can be observed, i.e., the axial resolution can be improved drastically compared to the traditional imaging approach. We demonstrate this phenomenon by applying a commercial microscopy lens (Nikon) system in VirtualLab Fusion.

For applications in the area of ultrashort pulse laser technologies, where the properties of the field must be controlled in both the space and time domains, “Simultaneous Spatial and Temporal Focusing” (SSTF) is a frequently used technique. Such setups often lead to spatiotemporal effects like the pulse front tilt. We built a commonly used SSTF setup to investigate the spatiotemporal behavior of the field in the focus and the effects of various system parameters on the resulting pulse front tilt.

Register now and save your seat for our first User Meetup. To inaugurate this new format we have chosen the topic of gratings.

21 January | 09:00 – 20:00 (CET)

Tight focusing by high-NA objective lenses, which generates a small PSF (Point Spread Function), is essential for high-resolution microscopy systems. Among many other microscopy systems, immersion microscopy uses a coverslip to separate the immersion liquid and the specimen. It may distort the PSF at the focal plane. We demonstrate that the asymmetric PSF is further elongated behind the coverslip.  Moreover, STED (stimulated emission depletion) microscopy, which is widely used for tens-of-nanometer resolution, requires a donut-shaped PSF for depletion. We follow the proposed method by P. Török and P.R.T Monro to model the tight focusing of a Gaussian-Laguerre beam. The generation of a donut-shaped PSF is demonstrated.