Patent ID: 6859313

Claim:
A super resolution microscope comprising: a first light source to emit a first light to excite a molecule of a sample from a ground state to a higher energy level vibration state which belongs to a lowest energy level electron state, a second light source to emit a second light to excite said molecule from said higher energy vibration state to a higher energy level quantum state, a phase modulate filter system for spatially modulating an intensity of said first and second lights, an optical system to overlap a part of an irradiation region of said first light and a part of an irradiation region of said second light partially on said sample, such that an overlapped portion of the irradiated regions of the first and second lights modulated in intensity by the phase modulate filter system is narrower than beam sizes of the first and the second lights, and an optical detector to detect a given fluorescence from the irradiated region of said first light and said second light overlapped by said optical system on said sample, wherein a resolution of the overlapped portion of the irradiated regions is higher than a resolution of the beam sizes of the first and second lights.