Limits in Optics – How to Bargain with Nature

Alongside Gabor, Leith, and others, Adolf Lohman has laid the foundations for information optics. One key question in this context is: What are the physical limits for the extraction and transmis-sion of information using optics? Understanding these limits delivers a precious present: They often come along in the form of uncertainty products, enabling us to “bargain with nature”. Their origins are, of course, connected with the “ingredients” at hand, such as the type of illumination, the light-object-interaction, the signal modality used, and the detection scheme. For the case of optical 3D-metrology, this has already been investigated in previous publications. As the concept of exploring and exploiting limits has proven useful, we follow Lohmann’s spirit to “generalize” successful findings (“can we teach how to invent?”) - guided by overarching ques-tions, such as: Are there other interesting fundamental limits? How to find – and reach – them? How are these limits connected to established statistical bounds (Fisher information / Cramér-Rao)? Are there more “ingredients” than mentioned above? Answering these questions, we learn to what extent there really is “no free lunch” in optics – and at the same time provide some guidelines how to get the meal you actually want. 70 sium zum 100sten Geburtstag von Prof. Adolf Lohmann Stefan Sinzinger F R E I T A G