Resolution limits for multiple single-photon emitters

Fluorescent microscopy is essential for many biological applications. It uses dye molecules or quantum dots that emit photons to create images. The resolution of such emitters is limited by the Rayleigh criterion. In recent years, several attempts have been made to overcome this limit for resolving two single-photon emitters. However, for emitters with unbalanced intensities, the absolute error in determining the distance increased as the sources moved closer together [1]. In a recent study, we demonstrated that a more accurate model, which takes into account photon statistics, allows for the resolution of sources with arbitrary intensity ratios [2]. In this report, an analysis of the resolution limits of complex two-dimensional objects composed of a larger number of sources will be presented.
[1] K. A. G. Bonsma-Fisher, W.-K. Tham, H. Ferretti, and A. M. Steinberg, Realistic sub-rayleigh imaging with phase-sensitive measurements, New Journal of Physics 21, 093010 (2019).
[2] K. G. Katamadze, B. I. Bantysh, A. Yu. Chernyavskiy, Yu. I. Bogdanov, and S. P. Kulik, Breaking Rayleigh's curse for two unbalanced single-photon emitters using BLESS technique. arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.13244 (2024).