Super-resolution imaging of Maxwell’s fish-eye lens based on surface polaritons

Abstract

Super-resolution imaging plays a crucial role in the fields of nanolithography, high volume transmission and sensing. Relentless efforts have been made to realize super-resolution imaging in the past decades. In this work, inspired by the mechanism of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs), we find that Maxwell's fish-eye lens (MFEL) coated with cylindrical layer of negative permeability can achieve super-resolution imaging. The amplification of evanescent waves in the negative permeability layer facilitates the transmittance of high spatial frequency information from object point to imaging point in the form of magnetic surface polaritons (MSPs). Both analytical calculations and numerical simulations are employed to prove the super-resolution imaging performance of MSPs-assisted MFEL. Our results may pave a new way to super-resolution imaging in metallic systems.