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• Chinese Optics Letters
• Vol. 20, Issue 3, 031101 (2022)
Jue Li1、2, Yangyang Zhou1、2、*, and Huanyang Chen1、2、**
Author Affiliations
• 1Institute of Electromagnetics and Acoustics and Department of Physics, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
• 2Fujian Engineering Research Center for EDA, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Wave Science and Detection Technology, Xiamen Key Laboratory of Multiphysics Electronic Information, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
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Jue Li, Yangyang Zhou, Huanyang Chen. Square Maxwell’s fish-eye lens for near-field broadband achromatic super-resolution imaging[J]. Chinese Optics Letters, 2022, 20(3): 031101 Copy Citation Text show less

Abstract

Broadband super-resolution imaging is important in the optical field. To achieve super-resolution imaging, various lenses from a superlens to a solid immersion lens have been designed and fabricated in recent years. However, the imaging is unsatisfactory due to low work efficiency and narrow band. In this work, we propose a solid immersion square Maxwell’s fish-eye lens, which realizes broadband (7–16 GHz) achromatic super-resolution imaging with full width at half-maximum around $0.2λ$ based on transformation optics at microwave frequencies. In addition, a super-resolution information transmission channel is also designed to realize long-distance multi-source super-resolution information transmission based on the super-resolution lens. With the development of 3D printing technology, the solid immersion Maxwell’s fish-eye lens is expected to be fabricated in the high-frequency band.

1. Introduction

Microscopy is a significant tool for research on life science and natural science. The resolution of the conventional lens system is constrained above one half-wavelength, due to the diffraction limit that evanescent waves carrying small amounts of information of an object decay in the far field. Many efforts have been made to overcome the diffraction limit; one important step is the proposed perfect lens in 2000[1]. The perfect lens can achieve perfect imaging by negative refractive materials to restore amplitude of all evanescent waves and phase of all propagating waves at the imaging plane. Following this idea, a series of superlenses[24] were designed from the microwave to optical band[5,6]. Later, the hyperlens as a far-field magnified super-resolution lens was proposed by hyperbolic dispersion materials, which can transform evanescent waves into far-field propagating waves. Utilizing alternative metal and dielectric materials, a one-dimensional hyperlens[7] and a two-dimensional hyperlens[8] have been designed and fabricated. However, for the superlens and hyperlens, it is difficult to push forward to applications, and relative experimental works were rarely reported in recent years due to the challenge of fabrication and the large loss from plasmonic resonance mechanisms and impedance mismatching between the object and lens.

Copy Citation Text
Jue Li, Yangyang Zhou, Huanyang Chen. Square Maxwell’s fish-eye lens for near-field broadband achromatic super-resolution imaging[J]. Chinese Optics Letters, 2022, 20(3): 031101