Back from last week’s science festival in downtown Marseille, where we had a quite nice success in presenting optics.

The photos can be seen at :

http://s306.photobucket.com/albums/nn245/jwkl67/FdS2008/?albumview=slideshow

Published in September 15^th issue of Optics Express :

http://oe.osa.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-16-19-15297

It’s the first experimental and theoretical report of a new effect : the 3-axis subwavelength confinement of light by a high refractive index microsphere. Freely available for download !

Abstract: Latex microspheres are used as a simple and low-cost means to achieve three axis electromagnetic confinement below the standard diffraction limit. We demonstrate their use to enhance the fluorescence fluctuation detection of single molecules. Compared to confocal microscopy with high numerical aperture, we monitor a detection volume reduction of one order of magnitude below the diffraction limit together with a 5-fold gain in the fluorescence rate per molecule. This offers new opportunities for a broad range of applications in biophotonics, plasmonics, optical data storage and ultramicroscopy.