Development of the pump-probe nanoscopy architecture

Although modern optical microscopy allows the achievement of sub-diffraction resolution, most of the current techniques rely on a fluorescence contrast mechanism. Moreover, deep tissue imaging remains a challenging task especially for thick and highly scattering biological objects. The infrared absorption/saturation microscopy method is designed to overcome these issues [1, 2], having InfraRed Nanoscopy (IRN) as an instrumental perspective. The main idea behind IRN is an absorption/saturation effect similar to conventional pump-probe in which the first pump beam modifies the carrier density inside the sample, followed by intensity changes in the transmitted probe beam.