Conjugate metamaterials and the perfect lens

TL;DR

This paper introduces conjugate metamaterials designed via transformation optics, enabling the creation of a perfect lens capable of subwavelength imaging by focusing all light components, including evanescent waves.

Contribution

It proposes a new class of conjugate metamaterials for super-resolution imaging, bridging the gap between conventional and left-handed metamaterials.

Findings

Conjugate metamaterials can serve as substrates for perfect lenses.

The perfect lens concept is extended through conjugate metamaterials approaching negative refractive index.

Subwavelength resolution is achievable with these new materials.

Abstract

In this letter, we show how transformation optics makes it possible to design what we call conjugate metamaterials. We show that these materials can also serve as substrates for making a subwavelength-resolution lens. The so-called "perfect lens", which is a lens that could focus all components of light (including propagating and evanescent waves), can be regarded as a limiting case, in which the respective conjugate metamaterials approach the characteristics of left-handed metamaterials, which have a negative refractive index.