Subwavelength imaging by a left-handed material superlens

TL;DR

This paper uses FDTD simulations to demonstrate that left-handed material slabs can achieve subwavelength imaging despite realistic absorption and size limitations, clarifying previous conflicting results.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the superlensing effect in LHM slabs considering practical absorption and size constraints, advancing understanding of their imaging capabilities.

Findings

Subwavelength resolution is achievable with realistic LHM slabs.

Absorption and thickness limit the superlens performance.

Dynamic imaging process depends on physical parameters.

Abstract

In this work, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is employed to justify the superlensing effect of left-handed material (LHM) slabs. Our results demonstrate that subwavelength resolution can be achieved by realistic LHM slabs with finite absorption and dimension. We present the dynamic feature of the imaging process and the dependence of physical parameters on the performance of the superlens. These results help to clarify the diversed FDTD results reported previously. We also show that the achievable resolution is limited by the absorption and thickness of the LHM slabs, which introduces difficulties in practical applications of the superlens.