Achieving sub-diffraction imaging through bound surface states in negative-refracting photonic crystals at the near-infrared

Abstract

We report the observation of imaging beyond the diffraction limit due to bound surface states in negative refraction photonic crystals. We achieve an effective negative index figure-of-merit [-Re(n)/Im(n)] of at least 380, ~125x improvement over recent efforts in the near-infrared, with a 0.4 THz bandwidth. Supported by numerical and theoretical analyses, the observed near-field resolution is 0.47 lambda, clearly smaller than the diffraction limit of 0.61 lambda. Importantly, we show this sub-diffraction imaging is due to the resonant excitation of surface slab modes, allowing refocusing of non-propagating evanescent waves.

References in corpus (5)

• Demonstration of Near-Infrared Negative-Index Materials
• Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Media with Indefinite Permittivity and Permeability Tensors
• Nanofabricated media with negative permeability at visible frequencies
• EM wave propagation in two-dimensional photonic crystals: a study of anomalous refractive effects
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• Resonant Transmission of Electromagnetic Fields through Subwavelength Zero-$\epsilon$ Slits
• On-chip optical filters with designable characteristics based on an interferometer with embedded silicon photonic structures