Optical microscopy with a single-molecule light source

Summary form only given. With the advent of scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) ultra high resolution optical microscopy has attracted a large interest. Although after more than a decade the conventional mode of SNOM that uses a subwavelength aperture has bottomed out at a resolution of roughly 50 nm, an unlimited resolution could be expected in optical near-field microscopy. One of the conceptually simplest configurations for reaching a nearly molecular resolution is replacing a physical aperture by a single molecule as a point-like source. The experimental realization of this idea has been confronted with several challenges. Here we report on the first demonstration of this form of optical microscopy and discuss its prospects for achieving the ultimate limit of resolution in this arrangement.