Nonlinear optical microscope and nonlinear optical microscopy

Abstract

Provided is a nonlinear optical microscope capable of improving the spatial resolution. The nonlinear optical microscope includes: an illuminating part for irradiating, through an objective lens, a sample with at least two colors of illumination light beams spatially and temporally overlapping each other; and a detecting part for detecting signal light generated from the sample due to nonlinear optical effect, the signal light resulting from the irradiation of the sample with the at least two colors of illumination light beams, in which the illuminating part irradiates the sample with the two colors of illumination light beams in which at least one of the illumination light beams has a wavefront distribution different from a wavefront distribution of the other one of the illumination light beams.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.