Far-Field Optical Hyperlens Magnifying Sub-diffraction-limited Objects

The diffraction limit of light, which iscaused by the loss of evanescent wavesin the far field that carry high spatial frequency information, limits the resolution of optical lenses to the order of the wavelength of light used to image the object. Projecting a sub-diffraction-limited image into the far field would require recovery of the evanescent waves. A metamaterials-based superlens offers that possibility (1). Although slablike superlenses have demonstrated sub-diffraction-limited res-olution (1–4) imaging in the near field, mag-nification of subwavelength features into the far field has not been possible. It was proposed that a magnifying superlens could be con-structed by using cylindrical metamaterials (5, 6). Recent theoretical studies on an optical hyper