Excitation of resonant surface plasmons for evanescent waves refocusing by a superlens

TL;DR

This paper uses FDTD simulations to analyze how resonant surface plasmons contribute to evanescent wave amplification and refocusing in a superlens, revealing optimal conditions for near-perfect imaging.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical study linking resonant surface plasmon excitation to evanescent wave recovery in a flat superlens, highlighting the importance of lens thickness and source distance.

Findings

Resonant surface plasmons are excited at the second interface during coupling.

Optimal superlens thickness and source distance are critical for evanescent wave refocusing.

Simulated imaging achieved a resolution of approximately 0.58λ, demonstrating near-perfect lens behavior.

Abstract

The amplification of evanescent waves by flat superlens requires a near-resonance coupling which has been linked to resonant surface plasmons. A subtle interplay has been proposed to exist between the excitation of well-defined resonant surface plasmons and the focusing capability of a superlens. To gain insights into these resonant modes and their contributions to the amplification and recovery of evanescent waves, we performed simple but robust full-wave FDTD simulations on causal negative index Lorentz models. We found that well-defined pair of resonant surface plasmons is excited whenever a coupling of a diverging transmitted beam and a converging refracted beam occurs at the second interface. The resonant coupling of these modes at the interface led to the excitation of a single interface resonance predicted by the theory. The physical consequence of this resonance is that incident wave energy is pumped into the negative-index material medium and beyond it. These phenomena contribute substantially to the amplification and recovery of the near-fields in the image plane. It is noteworthy that, for evanescent wave refocusing to be achieved in a flat superlens, its thickness, and the source-to-superlens distance should be optimized. This optimization is critical in that an optimal thickness alongside optimal source-to-superlens distance will allow evanescent wave refocusing to dominate material lost. The FDTD simulated result showed an image of the point source inside the superlens and beyond it when its thickness was optimized. The resolution of the image beyond the superlens was $\sim.58\lambda$ and this superlens behaves like a near-perfect lens. Overall, these numerically simulated results could serve as useful approximations to the degree of resonant amplification and refocusing of near-fields that can be achieved by flat superlens in near-fields experimental imaging setups.