Amplifying Evanescent Waves by Dispersion-induced Plasmons: Defying the Materials Limitation of Superlens

Abstract: Breaking the diffraction limit is always an appealing topic due to the urge for a better imaging resolution in almost all areas. As an effective solution, the superlens based on the plasmonic effect can resonantly amplify evanescent waves, and achieve subwavelength resolution. However, the natural plasmonic materials, within their limited choices, usually have inherit high losses and are only available from the infrared to visible wavelengths. In this work, we have theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that the arbitrary materials, even air, can be used to enhance evanescent waves and build low loss superlens with at the desired frequency. The operating mechanisms reside in the dispersion-induced effective plasmons in a bounded waveguide structure. Based on this, we constructed the hyperbolic metamaterials and experimentally verified its validity in the microwave range by the directional propagation and imaging with a resolution of 0.087 wavelength. We have also demonstrated that the imaging potential can be extended to terahertz and infrared bands. The proposed method can break the conventional barriers of plasmon-based lenses and bring new possibilities to the field of superresolution imaging from microwave to infrared wavelengths.