The emergence of imaging schemes capable of overcoming Abbe's diffraction barrier is revolutionizing optical microscopy. In 1873, the German physicist Ernst Abbe realized that the resolution of ...

The waves always 'spread' to some extent into the area beyond the gap. This is diffraction - the spreading out of waves when they go through a gap, or past the edge of a barrier. The extent of the ...

When a laser beam is incident on a narrow opaque object such as a fine wire or a strand of hair, the resulting diffraction pattern is similar to the diffraction pattern of a slit of the same width as ...