Experimental realization of breaking diffraction limit by planar negative-index metamaterials in free space

Abstract

The sharpness of the image formed by a conventional lens is always limited by the wavelength of light. Recently, Pendry proposed a superlens, with a negative refractive index, such that the resolution is not limited by wavelength. Herein, we report direct experimental evidence of Pendry's superlens breaking the diffraction limit, in the microwave range of the X band (8-12 GHz), with a periodic array of split ring resonators and continuous wires; i.e. a meta-material with negative index of refraction.

Negative Refractive Index Materials

“…It should be mentioned that FEMLAB, HFSS 108 and other FE codes may work in both time and frequency domain, but NIMs can only be handled in the frequency domain by these codes. Thus, the FEMLAB results presented by Lih et al 101 are obtained from a frequency domain calculation although the authors claim that they used a FE time domain solver. An important problem of all domain methods is the truncation of space.…”

“…Thus, the numerical analysis of arbitrary configurations causes no essential problem. However, currently almost all publications still focus on the simplest configurations of NIM prisms 95 96 and NIM slabs [95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102] because the details of these structures are still not well understood. The NIM prisms are mainly used in experiments for the verification of all-angle negative refraction.…”

90° Polarization rotator and antireflector using meanderline chiral metamaterials: Analytical and numerical approach

“…Metamaterials are rapidly developing research topic that includes a vast range of artificial structures and electromagnetic properties due to have many potential application areas such as diffraction-limit breaking [1], cloaking [2], super lens [3], sensing [4,5], absorber [6] and so on [7,9]. With this regard, there has been an increasing interest on chiral metamaterials (CMMs) made up of periodically arranged unit cells.…”

“…Fundamental technique to obtain electromagnetic properties of the effective media is achieved by parameter retrieval [43,47]. If the size of the inclusions is much smaller than the wavelength (< λ\10), the media is called as both effective and homogenous.…”

Reflection and refraction of light at the interface of a uniaxial bicrystal

“…Recently, there have been many research works about negative refraction, due to its implication for realizing so-called subwavelength focusing [2,3]. And negative refraction and (or) super-resolution image were demonstrated with many kinds of composed media, such as SRR structure [2,4], L-C transmission line [5], photonic crystal [6], and 12-fold-symmetry quasicrystals [7].…”