Diamond colour centres as a nanoscopic light source for scanning near-field optical microscopy

Recently it was shown that a single molecule at cryogenic temperatures coul d be used as a local light source for illumination of a sample in the near field. Conventional light-emitting systems such as dye molecules and semico nductor quantum dots could also be used for this purpose, but they suffer f rom lack of photostability. However, colour centres in diamond have been fo und to be remarkably stable against bleaching and blinking effects. Here we present the fist SNOM images taken with nanoscopic diamond crystals as a l ight source.