Quantum limits of position and polarizability estimation in the optical near field

Optical near fields are at the heart of various applications in sensing and imaging. We investigate dipole scattering as a parameter estimation problem and show that optical near fields carry more information about the location and the polarizability of the scatterer than the respective far fields. This increase in information originates from, and occurs simultaneously with, the scattering process itself. Our calculations also yield the far-field localization limit for dipoles in free space.