Off-axis Aberrations Improve the Resolution Limits of Incoherent Imaging

Abstract

The presence of off-axis tilt and Petzval curvature, two of the lowest-order off-axis Seidel aberrations, is shown to improve the Fisher information of two-point separation estimation in an incoherent imaging system compared to an aberration-free system. Our results show that the practical localization advantages of modal imaging techniques within the field of quantum-inspired superresolution can be achieved with direct imaging measurement schemes alone.

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