To spread some holiday spirit this year, we have decided to send four special newsletters showcasing our "Top Use Cases 2019". What makes it so special: there is also something to win.

To spread some holiday spirit this year, we have decided to send four special newsletters showcasing our "Top Use Cases 2019".
What makes it so special: there is also something to win.

With VirtualLab Fusion, we investigate three real objective lenses with different values of the NA (numerical aperture) following Rayleigh’s theory, and also compare the lens performance with the ideal case predicted by the Debye-Wolf integral.

The Rayleigh criterion is often used in practice to characterize the resolution limit of microscope or telescope systems. It is defined as follows: when the center of the diffraction pattern of one point is just overlapped with the first minimum of the diffraction pattern of another point, according to the Rayleigh criterion they can just be resolved. With VirtualLab Fusion, we investigate three real objective lenses with different values of the NA (numerical aperture) following Rayleigh’s theory, and also compare the lens performance with the ideal case predicted by the Debye-Wolf integral.

We demonstrate the Talbot effect, which is a well-known near- field diffraction effect from periodic structures such as gratings.

The Talbot effect, one of the best-known diffraction effects in relation to gratings, was first observed in 1836 by Henry Fox Talbot. When a periodic structure, e.g. a grating, is illuminated by a plane wave, one can observe the image of the grating at a certain distance (or its multiple) behind the grating. This specific distance is called the Talbot length. Thanks to the automatized free-space propagation technology in VirtualLab Fusion, such effects can be easily and accurately reproduced and analyzed. We demonstrate it with both linear and crossed gratings as examples.