When going to the nanoscale, the laws governing light change
dramatically. Fundamental laws of optics need to be revisited.
This opens new avenues for applications. Research teams of
C’Nano IdF are making key contributions to this optics
revolution. |Imaging has always been a major application of
optics. Since Abbe and Rayleigh it had been taken for granted
that details finer than half a wavelength cannot be resolved.
Hence, optical microscopy was limited to micron-size objects. In
the last 20 years, different techniques (Scanning Near-field
Optical Microscopy, Stimulated Emission Depletion microscopy,
Photo Activated Localization Microscopy) have demonstrated that
imaging with a resolution on the order of 10 nm is possible
using optical wavelengths. This gives access to the “nano-
world“. These discoveries were the beginning of the exploration
of the interaction of light with matter at the nanoscale. This
is the subject of nanophotonics. Controlling the interaction
between light and matter at the nanoscale al