Real time, nanometric 3D-tracking of nanoparticles made possible by second harmonic generation digital holographic microscopy

In the past decade, quantitative phase imaging gave a new dimension to optical microscopy, and the recent extension of digital holography techniques to nonlinear microscopy appears very promising, for the phase of nonlinear signal provides additional information, inaccessible to incoherent imaging schemes. In this work, we show that the position of second harmonic generation (SHG) emitters can be determined from their respective phase, at the nanometer scale, with single-shot off-axis digital holography, making possible real-time nanometric 3D-tracking of SHG emitters such as nanoparticles. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America