dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaDirected sub-wavelength imaging using a layered metal-dielectric system
| Authors | B. Wood, J. B. Pendry, D. P. Tsai |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0608170 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608170 |
| DOI | 10.1103/PhysRevB.74.115116 |
Abstract
We examine some of the optical properties of a metamaterial consisting of thin layers of alternating metal and dielectric. We can model this material as a homogeneous effective medium with anisotropic dielectric permittivity. When the components of this permittivity have different signs, the behavior of the system becomes very interesting: the normally evanescent parts of a P-polarized incident field are now transmitted, and there is a preferred direction of propagation. We show that a slab of this material can form an image with sub-wavelength details, at a position which depends on the frequency of light used. The quality of the image is affected by absorption and by the finite width of the layers; we go beyond the effective medium approximation to predict how thin the layers need to be in order to obtain subwavelength resolution.
{
"annotation_id": "9af52cbe-f59f-4196-9899-c2ca4ea96b90",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:10.962000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:10.962000Z",
"file_hash": "55941526f795c4be8580be9c09eda98413b27e6762ddd748bab803e6d6127800",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "We examine some of the optical properties of a metamaterial consisting of\nthin layers of alternating metal and dielectric. We can model this material as\na homogeneous effective medium with anisotropic dielectric permittivity. When\nthe components of this permittivity have different signs, the behavior of the\nsystem becomes very interesting: the normally evanescent parts of a P-polarized\nincident field are now transmitted, and there is a preferred direction of\npropagation.\n We show that a slab of this material can form an image with sub-wavelength\ndetails, at a position which depends on the frequency of light used. The\nquality of the image is affected by absorption and by the finite width of the\nlayers; we go beyond the effective medium approximation to predict how thin the\nlayers need to be in order to obtain subwavelength resolution.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0608170",
"authors": [
"B. Wood",
"J. B. Pendry",
"D. P. Tsai"
],
"categories": [
"physics.optics"
],
"doi": "10.1103/PhysRevB.74.115116",
"title": "Directed sub-wavelength imaging using a layered metal-dielectric system",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608170"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "b1eb4788-d7fc-4033-b702-740fe336fd0d",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}