Reading out Fisher information from the zeros of the point spread function

Abstract

We show that, for optical systems whose point spread functions exhibit isolated zeros, the information one can gain about the separation between two incoherent point light sources does not scale quadratically with the separation (which is the distinctive dependence causing Rayleigh's curse) but only linearly. Moreover, the dominant contribution to the separation information comes from regions in the vicinity of these zeros. We experimentally confirm this idea, demonstrating significant superresolution using natural or artificially created spectral doublets.