Complex observation in electron microscopy. II. Direct visualization of phases and amplitudes of exit wave functions

We report microscopic observation of complex waves emitted from objects. Two images sequentially detected at the image plane with two transmission electron microscopic (TEM) methods, the conventional and the phase-contrasted, are numerically combined to reproduce complex wave functions, which are holding complete optical information. The long lasting issue in conventional TEM that the contrast and the resolution of images are difficult to be simultaneously optimized was settled with the complex wave functions. The aberration-corrected phase images of ferritin (at 400 kV) and TMV (at 100 kV) did show an extraordinary high contrast free from image distortion without sacrificing the resolution compared with that obtained by conventional TEM.