Synthesis of arbitrary interference patterns using a single galvanometric mirror, and its application to Structured Illumination Microscopy

We present a new interferometer concept called SWIFT, able to project arbitrary interference patterns constructed from small numbers of plane waves. SWIFT can control each plane wave’s orientation, intensity, polarization and phase using just a single galvanometric mirror. We demonstrate the application of SWIFT to both 2D and 3D Structured Illumination Microscopy, characterizing performance on fluorescent nanoparticles and iFluor 488 phalloidin-stained U-2 OS cells.