Abstract
We demonstrate numerically the diffraction-free propagation of sub-wavelength sized optical beams through simple elements built of metal-dielectric multilayers. The proposed metamaterial consists of silver and a high refractive index dielectric, and is designed using the effective medium theory as strongly anisotropic and impedance matched to air. Further it is characterised with the transfer matrix method, and investigated with FDTD. The diffraction-free behaviour is verified by the analysis of FWHM of PSF in the function of the number of periods. Small reflections, small attenuation, and reduced Fabry–Pérot resonances make it a flexible diffraction-free material for arbitrarily shaped optical planar elements with sizes of the order of one wavelength.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Kotyński, R., Stefaniuk, T. & Pastuszczak, A. Sub-wavelength diffraction-free imaging with low-loss metal-dielectric multilayers. Appl. Phys. A 103, 905–909 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-011-6286-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-011-6286-3