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Far-Field Super-Resolution Imaging By Nonlinear Excited Evanescent Waves

Abbe's resolution limit, one of the best-known physical limitations, poses a great challenge for any wave systems in imaging, wave transport, and dynamics. Originally formulated in linear optics, this Abbe's limit can be broken using nonlinear optical interactions. Here we extend the Abbe theory into a nonlinear regime and experimentally demonstrate a far-field, label-free, and scan-free super-resolution imaging technique based on nonlinear four-wave mixing to retrieve near-field scattered evanescent waves, achieving sub-wavelength resolution of $λ/15.6$. This method paves the way for application in biomedical imaging, semiconductor metrology, and photolithography.