A structured illumination microscope includes: a first illumination optical system configured to irradiate, from a first direction, a sample with activating light for activating a fluorescent substance included in the sample; a second illumination optical system configured to irradiate, from a second direction that is different from the first direction, the sample with interference fringes of exciting light for exciting the fluorescent substance; a control unit configured to control a direction and a phase of the interference fringes; an imaging optical system configured to form an image of the sample irradiated with the interference fringes; an imaging element configured to take the image formed by the imaging optical system to generate a first image; and a demodulation unit configured to generate a second image by using a plurality of the first images generated by the imaging element.

A light irradiation apparatus focuses light on a surface or an inside of an object to observe or process the object, and includes a laser light source, a lens, a lens, a mask, a wave plate, and a lens. The mask is a multi-ring mask for spatially intensity-modulating input light in a beam cross-section and outputting modulated light, and includes a plurality of ring-shaped light-shielding areas provided around a center position, and a transmitting area provided between two adjacent light-shielding areas out of the plurality of light-shielding areas. A radial width of each of the two adjacent light-shielding areas out of the plurality of light-shielding areas is larger than a radial width of the transmitting area provided between the two light-shielding areas.

The present invention relates to an optical lens comprising at least one straight part and at least one curved part on the outer surface thereof, in which an apodization area for reducing a flare phenomenon is disposed at an edge adjacent to the straight part. The optical lens has the advantage of reducing flare and ghosting phenomena due to a diffraction effect of the apodization area in the edge region.

Certain examples disclose systems and methods for imaging a target. An example method includes: a) activating a subset of light-emitting molecules in a wide field area of a target using an excitation light; b) capturing one or more images of the light emitted from the subset of the molecules illuminated with the excitation light; c) localizing one or more activated light emitting molecules using one or more single molecule microscopic methods to obtain localization information; d) simultaneously capturing spectral information for the same localized activated light emitting molecules using one or more spectroscopic methods; e) resolving one or more non-diffraction limited images of the area of the target using a combination of the localization and spectral information for the localized activated light emitting molecules; and 0 displaying the one or more non-diffraction limited images.

According to measurement results of an encoder system, a stage driving system that is a magnetic levitation type planar motor is controlled to drive and control a wafer stage, and in the case where an abnormality of the driving and control of the wafer stage has been detected, the stage driving system is controlled to apply a thrust in a vertical direction to the wafer stage. With this operation, the pitching of the wafer stage can be avoided, which makes it possible to prevent damage of the wafer stage and structures placed immediately above the stage upper surface.

The solid immersion lens unit includes: a solid immersion lens having a contact surface allowed to be in contact with an inspection object and a spherical surface allowed to be opposite to an objective lens; a holder holding the solid immersion lens; a magnet provided to the holder; and a spherical body rotatably held by a magnetic force of the magnet at a position opposite to the spherical surface. The holder swingably holds the solid immersion lens in a state where the spherical surface is in contact with the spherical body.

One aspect of the invention provides a method of continuously scanning with a localization microscope. The method includes: modifying a position of a sample relative to a field of view (FOV) of the localization microscope to capture a plurality of image frames of the sample, each captured image frame having a limited FOV; acquiring image frames with the localization microscope during at least one position modification; determining a set of localization position coordinates for at least one localizable object in the sample within at least one image frame of the plurality of image frames; determining one or more field of view (FOV) position coordinates for the at least one image frame; and modifying the set of localization position coordinates based on the one or more FOV position coordinates to produce a collection of coordinates covering a larger spatial region than the at least one image frame.

An optical imaging system having an aperture comprised of a plurality of concentric annuli. The outer radius of each annulus is proportional to the square root of the number of annuli. Each annulus also having an azimuthally linearly increasing phase profile comprising for a given light wavelength. The system also includes a birefringent plate and the aperture and birefringent plate are adapted to jointly encode the full spatial and polarimetric degrees of freedom of a point source.

An optical imaging system having an aperture comprised of a plurality of concentric annuli. The outer radius of each annulus is proportional to the square root of the number of annuli. Each annulus also having an azimuthally linearly increasing phase profile comprising for a given light wavelength. The system also includes a birefringent plate and the aperture and birefringent plate are adapted to jointly encode the full spatial and polarimetric degrees of freedom of a point source.

The disclosure is directed to various apodization schemes for pupil imaging scatterometry. In some embodiments, the system includes an apodizer disposed within a pupil plane of the illumination path. In some embodiments, the system further includes an illumination scanner configured to scan a surface of the sample with at least a portion of apodized illumination. In some embodiments, the system includes an apodized pupil configured to provide a quadrupole illumination function. In some embodiments, the system further includes an apodized collection field stop. The various embodiments described herein may be combined to achieve certain advantages.