Optical gain removes absorption and increases resolution in a near-field lens

Abstract

A recent paper showed how to construct a lens that focuses near field radiation and hence produce resolution unlimited by wavelength. The prescription requires lossless materials with negative refractive index: finite loss cuts off the finer details of the image. In this paper we suggest compensating for losses by introducing optical gain media into the lens design. Calculations demonstrate a dramatic improvement in performance for a silver/gain composite medium at optical frequencies.

RevTeX4, 4 pages

References in corpus (2)

• Limitations on Sub-Diffraction Imaging with a Negative Refractive Index Slab
• The asymmetric lossy near-perfect lens

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