Magnifying Lens with Ultrabroadband Super‐Resolution Real Imaging

Abstract

In recent years, novel magnifying lenses have generated much attention, not only because of their intriguing physics but also for their ability to achieve real-time super-resolution imaging. However, these super-resolution magnifying lenses have been limited to virtual imaging and narrow band hindering the practical applications of magnifying lens. Here, a method is proposed to design a real-imaging magnifying lens with ultrabroadband super-resolution real-time imaging capability based on conformal transformation optics. As a proof of concept, a two dimensional (2D) magnifying lens is designed, and its ability of ultrabroadband real imaging (working bandwidth of 104% of central frequency) with sub-diffraction resolution in the microwave region is experimentally verified. It is found that the designed 2D magnifying lens has good robustness of fabrication errors, which provides more flexibility for practical applications. Furthermore, a three dimensional (3D) magnifying lens is designed by rotating the 2D magnifying lens along its symmetric axis. The 3D magnifying lens also maintains excellent imaging performance consistent with the one of 2D magnifying lens. Both 2D and 3D magnifying lenses can be integrated into conventional microscopes, expanding their capabilities for color super-resolution magnified real imaging and opening a new realm in ultrabroadband super-resolution real imaging.

Vector Light Field Immediately behind an Ideal Spherical Lens: Spin–Orbital Conversion, Additional Optical Vortices, Spin Hall Effect, Magnetization

“…Studies concerned with practical uses of high-NA spherical lenses can be found in Refs. [32][33][34][35][36]. In [32], the axial and transverse resolution of an immersion spherical lens with NA = 1.4 was improved via using a ring mask.…”

“…In Ref. [34], the numerical simulation of a graded-index lens with radial refractive index profile for a millimeter wavelength range of 9-13 GHz revealed that the lens could resolve two point light sources separated by λ/3. The study in Ref.…”

Super‐Resolution Imaging via Lenses with Angular Magnification

“…However, they are limited to sub-wavelength scale working distances and cannot be applied to imaging for objects at a far distance. [6,7] Farfield super-resolution optical microscopy, which has also witnessed a rapid development, can be divided into three major categories, i.e., single molecule localization, point-spread-function (PSF) engineering and frequency shifting. Particularly, single molecule localization microscopy achieves a resolution of 10 nm [8] by using photoactivation or photoswitching of single fluorophores and position determination; stimulated emission depletion microscopy compresses the effective PSF far beyond the diffraction limit and achieves a resolution of 2.4 nm [9] by utilizing non-linear effect of the competition between stimulated emission and autofluorescence; structured light illumination microscopy realizes a resolution of 𝜆/5 [10] by shifting the higher frequency information into propagation waves to reconstruct the high-resolution image of an object.…”