Engineering Space for Light via Transformation Optics

TL;DR

This paper explores transformation optics to design metamaterial lenses that convert near-field patterns into magnified far-field images, including truncated and open designs, and investigates their imaging performance through simulations.

Contribution

It introduces novel open and truncated lens designs based on high-order spatial transformations and analyzes their imaging capabilities via numerical simulations.

Findings

Full and 3/4-body lenses produce identical images.

Truncated 1/4-body lenses show performance limitations.

Designs enable near-field to far-field image transformation.

Abstract

Conceptual studies and numerical simulations are performed for imaging devices that transform a near-field pattern into magnified far-zone images and are based on high-order spatial transformation in cylindrical domains. A lens translating a near-field pattern from an almost circular input boundary onto a magnified far-field image at a flat output boundary is considered. The lens is made of a metamaterial with anisotropic permittivity and permeability both depending on a single 'scaling' parameter of the transformation. Open designs of the lens with a truncated body ('3/4-body' and '1/4-body' lenses) are suggested and analyzed. It is shown that the ideal full-lens and the '3/4-body' lens produce identical images. Numerical simulations of '1/4-body' designs indicate that further truncation of the lens could limit its per-formance. A light concentrator, "focusing" far-zone fields into a nanometer-scale area, is also considered.