Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 130
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2016-16130-7

Review

Optical resolution from Fisher information

¹ Department of Optics, Palacký University, CZ-77146, Olomouc, Czech Republic
² Dipartimento di Fisica and MECENAS, Università di Bari, I-70126, Bari, Italy
³ INFN, Sezione di Bari, I-70126, Bari, Italy
⁴ Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi”, I-00184, Roma, Italy
⁵ Departamento de Óptica, Facultad de Fısica, Universidad Complutense, E-28040, Madrid, Spain
⁶ Max-Planck-Institut für die Physik des Lichts, D-91058, Erlangen, Germany

^* e-mail: lsanchez@fis.ucm.es

Received: 2 February 2016
Accepted: 31 March 2016
Published online: 4 May 2016

Abstract

The information gained by performing a measurement on a physical system is most appropriately assessed by the Fisher information, which in fact establishes lower bounds on estimation errors for an arbitrary unbiased estimator. We revisit the basic properties of the Fisher information and demonstrate its potential to quantify the resolution of optical systems. We illustrate this with some conceptually important examples, such as single-slit diffraction, spectroscopy and superresolution techniques.