Abstract: A method for phase contrasting-correlation spectroscopy: converting an incident linearly polarized light into two polarized components (polarized divergent and convergent components, wherein the polarized divergent component is orthogonal to the polarized convergent component), focusing each of the polarized divergent component and the polarized convergent component into a focal plane, thereby producing two focus planes constituting a reference focus (RF) plane and a sample focus (SF) plane; placing a sample at the SF plane and ambient conditions of the sample at the RF plane, resulting in a phase shift between the two polarized components; reconstituting the two phase-shifted polarized components into a phase-shifted linearly polarized light; detecting the phase-shifted linearly polarized light; calculating phase and intensity of the sample from the phase-shifted linearly polarized light; establishing an autocorrelation of phase and intensity of the phase-shifted linearly polarized light; and generating corr

Abstract: A method of obtaining a measurement signal representative of the particle size distributions in nanocrystal suspensions that includes a step of providing a first light beam along a first axis to a first micro-retarder array to generate polarization wavefront shaped light. The shaped light is applied to an objective configured to focus two orthogonally polarized components of the polarization wavefront shaped light to produce first and second axially offset foci along the first axis. A sample having particles in suspension is disposed in one foci to produce a measurement optical signal having phase and intensity values corresponding to at least some of the particles in suspension. The method also includes determining intensity and quantitative phase information as a function of time based on the optical signals.