Adiabatic far-field sub-diffraction imaging

Abstract

The limited resolution of a conventional optical imaging system stems from the fact that the fine feature information of an object is carried by evanescent waves, which exponentially decays in space and thus cannot reach the imaging plane. We introduce here an adiabatic lens, which utilizes a geometrically conformal surface to mediate the interference of slowly decompressed electromagnetic waves at far field to form images. The decompression is satisfying an adiabatic condition, and by bridging the gap between far field and near field, it allows far-field optical systems to project an image of the near-field features directly. Using these designs, we demonstrated the magnification can be up to 20 times and it is possible to achieve sub-50 nm imaging resolution in visible. Our approach provides a means to extend the domain of geometrical optics to a deep sub-wavelength scale.