Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy has made a substantial imprint in the development of cell biology, anatomical sciences and neurosciences with its superior performance of high-speed three-dimensional imaging acquisition at high resolution. However, its implementation requires delicate instrumentation, and further extension of its present capability seems limited by current optics systems and techniques. Metasurfaces are presently receiving increased attention for its versatile capacity in constructing multifunctional photonic components with low dimension and high efficiency. Here, we propose and design a dielectric metasurface to realize convenient multiple light-sheet illumination. In mathematics, ideal periodic multiple light sheets are the Fourier transform of a series of coherent light waves with discrete angular spatial frequencies, which can be easily generated by the sophisticatedly designed compact yet efficient metasurface. Full-wave simulations demonstrate that the diffraction pattern, produced by the metasurface, has extremely large interval and nearly half-wavelength thickness in the direction perpendicular to light propagation. This consequently allows for the realization of multiple light sheets with time-averaged uniform intensity by mechanically dithering the metasurface in the propagation direction. We finally show that the inevitable background noise dressed in the diffraction pattern can be effectively suppressed by adopting two-photon excitation. This study provides a practicable means to produce multiple light sheets potentially for building high-speed, high-resolution light-sheet microscopy.

中文翻译：

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傅里叶变换超表面实现的高速光片显微镜多平面照明。

光片荧光显微镜以其高分辨率的高速三维成像采集的卓越性能，在细胞生物学，解剖学和神经科学的发展中赢得了重要的烙印。但是，其实现需要精密的仪器，并且其当前功能的进一步扩展似乎受到当前光学系统和技术的限制。目前，超颖表面因其在构造低尺寸和高效率的多功能光子组件方面的多功能性而受到越来越多的关注。在这里，我们提出并设计了介电超表面，以实现方便的多重光片照明。在数学中，理想的周期多重光片是一系列具有离散角空间频率的相干光波的傅立叶变换，可以通过精心设计的紧凑而高效的超表面轻松生成。全波模拟表明，由超颖表面产生的衍射图样在垂直于光传播的方向上具有极大的间隔和近一半的波长厚度。因此，这通过在传播方向上对超颖表面进行机械抖动，可以实现具有平均时间平均强度的多个光片。我们最终表明，采用双光子激发可以有效地抑制衍射图样中不可避免的背景噪声。这项研究为生产可能用于构建高速，高分辨率光片显微镜的多片光片提供了一种可行的方法。