Differentially-Enhanced Sideband Imaging via Radio-frequency Encoding

We present a microscope paradigm that performs differential interference imaging with high sensitivity via optical amplification and radio-frequency (RF) heterodyne detection. This method, termed differentially-enhanced sideband imaging via radio-frequency encoding (DESIRE), uniquely exploits frequency-to-space mapping technique to encode the image of an object onto the RF sidebands of an illumination beam. As a proof-of-concept, we show validation experiment by implementing radio frequency (f = 15 GHz) phase modulation in conjunction with spectrally-encoded laser scanning technique to acquire one-dimensional image of a barcode-like object using a commercial RF spectrum analyzer.