Optical interference methods of subwavelength-resolution imaging

We present two novel optical interference methods for measuring characteristics of surfaces with subwavelength resolution. One method is based on recording interferograms of the light near field which comprises information on the subwavelength structure of the surface. The idea of the other method is to transform the near field to propagated waves and measure their parameters far from the studied surface. The proposed methods have been tested by numerical simulation. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Radiofizika, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 73–84, January 2009.