Reviewer: Francesco Reina, PhD, Researcher in Biophysical Imaging at the Leibniz IPHT, Jena, Germany.
Reviewer contact: https://www.nano-immunology.org/francesco-reina.html
Date of review: March 4, 2020.
-
In Figure 2, I think people with an interest in building would benefit from having the numbers in the photo also associated with the components in the schematic below. Also, the fact that the signal from the sample is in the dotted makes the immediate understanding a bit difficult from a more lay audience.
-
Perhaps in the appendix, a comparison between a phase contrast image obtained on a regular Phase contrast microscope, and your setup, would be more convincing to those unfamiliar with optics.
-
Personally I believe the darkfield data should have more relevance in the main text, and not just present in the Appendix. An image generated on the same line as Figure 3, but with darkfield, would be even more proof.
-
Are you planning any experiment to prove other properties of the stimulated emission field, for example its polarization relative to the incoming one? Also at this point one might be tempted to ask if the orientation of the fluorescent molecule has any influence on the efficiency of the stimulated emission, although I think that has already been explored.
-
If the emission of fluorescence is different from the one of the source, wouldn't it be sufficient to detect it in any other direction than the one taken by the stimulating beam? Of course this will encounter different problems, for example in that there would be other sources of scattering, weak signal, geometry of the system, but nevertheless, maybe something to think about.