Generating mechanism of the energy-stream loops for the evanescent waves in a left-handed material slab

The generating mechanism of the energy-stream loops (ESLs) for the evanescent waves around the interfaces of a left-handed material (LHM) slab has been investigated with a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The simulations have shown that these ESLs originate from standing waves, attributed to the intervention of counter-propagating evanescent waves. Large numbers of ESLs can appear because of the numerous values of wave vectors k_y. The larger ESLs die out more quickly than the smaller ones in time after the source is switched off, the ESLs shrink continuously with increasing delay, and the oscillated distributions of the evanescent waves between the surfaces can also be validated. It is greatly helpful for the further comprehension on energy fluxes of evanescent waves in the LHM slab.     

Left-handed materials do not make a perfect lens

By means of an analysis on evanescent waves in left-handed materials (LHM), we show that within a slab of such a medium, sandwiched between two positive refraction media, there is amplification of evanescent waves in ideal lossless, dispersiveless media; however, contrary to previous claims, this is limited to a finite width of the slab so that it prevents their restoration and perfect focusing. We illustrate this by considering their coupling to propagating waves through a tunnel barrier containing a slab of LHM. Further, we show that the effect of absorption, necessarily present in such materials, may drastically change any evanescent amplifying wave into a decaying one.     

源嵌入正折射率传输线介质板内的倏逝波和成像特性

 提出了点源嵌入正折射率介质板进行亚波长成像的新方法,分析了位于负折射率媒质里的正折射率介质板内外的电压倏逝波和电压传播波分布。正和负折射率媒质分别由2维未加载传输线和2维加载电感、电容传输线网络组成。微波电路和数值仿真结果都显示由于板内增大的倏逝场,在正折射率介质板的两个界面附近出现了很大的电压幅度,该结果证实了该正折射率介质板透镜能够恢复电压倏逝波,从而提高像的分辨率。     

关于左手性介质几何光学的研究(一)

根据几何光学中的费马原理和完善成像原理研究了光线经过正负折射率界面时的传播特性,推导了单负折射率完善成像的曲面方程,讨论了单块负折射率透镜成像特性的一些缺陷及改进方案,依此指出了最短时间原理的适用范围的局限性和利用左手性介质制作光学器件的优越性,为进一步研究左手性介质的光学特性和相关光学器件设计提供了理论基础.     

Surface-wave mechanism of subwavelength imaging by a flat left-handed superlens

We develop a theory describing the dynamics and interaction of electromagnetic surface waves (ESWs) resonantly excited by an external source in a slab of left-handed material (LHM) with identical negative (equal to −1) values of dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability that makes up a so-called perfect lens, or a superlens. We show that subwavelength imaging by a superlens is associated with the degeneracy of the spectrum of eigen electromagnetic surface modes at the interfaces of the metamaterial slab, whereas the dynamic response of the superlens is completely determined by the dynamics of these modes and the dispersion properties of the metamaterial. We obtain conditions that enable one to find out when a superlens produces subwavelength images of an external source. We consider the cases of a stationary and a pulse source, as well as of a source that moves with constant velocity or oscillates in space.     

Effect of initial conditions on wave motion in density-stratified three-layer liquid with free surface

The ratio of amplitudes of waves generated by different interfaces in stratified inhomogeneous liquid is analytically studied. The amplitudes of waves generated by the second interface depend on the initial conditions and can be greater or less than the amplitudes of waves generated by the third interface. The amplitude ratio of the external and internal waves significantly depends on the ratio of liquid densities and layer thicknesses. Substantial effect of the initial conditions is manifested as a variation in the ratio of the amplitudes of external and internal waves and the amplitude ratio of waves generated by different interfaces.     

Left-handed metamaterial based superlens for subwavelength imaging of electromagnetic waves

Lenses made of negative index materials have the ability to focus the propagating and evanescent components of electromagnetic waves. Such a possibility enables super resolution, in turn resulting in sharper, subwavelength size images. In this present work, we present subwavelength imaging that was obtained from a one-dimensional left-handed metamaterial (LHM) composed of alternating layers of split-ring resonators and thin wires. We investigated the effect of the thickness of LHM lenses on image size. The left-handed pass band within the negative permittivity and permeability region is shown experimentally and theoretically for different thicknesses of LHM slabs. We also studied the transmission-phase of LHMs with a different number of unit cells along the propagation direction. The phase decreases with the increasing thicknesses of LHM slabs, proving that the phase velocity is negative in the left-handed transmission band. PACS 42.25.-p; 41.20.Jb; 81.05.-t     

The wave bivector formalism associated with circumferential leaky waves

It is shown that the circumferential internal waves propagating around an elastic cylinder can be locally seen as plane evanescent waves, at any observation point inside the surrounding fluid. This is done by direct calculation of the associated complex bivector. The exact anatomy of the wave is detailed and the phase propagation paths are found to be curved, as expected. The transition to the plane interface is achieved. Polarization ellipses associated with the acoustic displacement vector are described. The additional low evanescence assumption leads to conventional ray interpretation with identification of the ray tube divergence coefficients, and the wavefront is found to be the involute of a circle.     

Finite-size effects of a left-handed material slab on the image quality

The characteristics of an imaging system formed by a left-handed material (LHM) slab of finite length are studied, and the influence of the finite length of the slab on the image quality is analyzed. Unusual phenomena such as surface bright spots and negative energy stream at the image side are observed and explained as the cavity effects of surface plasmons excited by the evanescent components of the incident field. For a thin LHM slab, the cavity effects are found rather sensitive to the length of the slab; the bright spots on the bottom surface of the slab may stretch to the image plane and degrade the image quality.     

Enhanced twinkling in left-handed media

A slab of left-handed material (LHM) with refractive index -1 forms a perfect lens that retains subwavelength information about a source or object. Such lenses are highly susceptible to perturbations affecting their performance. It is shown that illuminating a roughened interface between air and an LHM produces a regime for enhanced focusing of light close to the boundary. This generates caustics that are brighter, fluctuate more, and cause Gaussian speckle at distances closer to the interface than in right-handed matter. These effects present fresh challenges for perfecting the perfect lens.     

Simple and high efficient optical trapping using a cylindrical lens and a single plane wave of incidence

We suggest a simple and high efficient method for trapping particles in the evanescent field. In this method, a single plane wave is normally incident on the cylindrical surface of a cylindrical lens and then incident on the plane surface of the lens at an angle larger than the critical angle. Multiple reflections of light within the cylindrical lens create two evanescent waves with different directions in the transmitted field. Interference of two evanescent waves comes into being a standing wave which can stably trap particles close to the top of the cylindrical lens. Based on the Rayleigh approximation, we obtain analytical expressions of optical force acting on a Rayleigh particle placed in the vicinity of the lens. We find that the trap stiffness and trap depth is dependent on the radius of the cylindrical lens, wavelength and polarization of light, and incident angle at the lens–liquid interface.     

A Non-Energy-Concentrating Lens Using Left-Handed Material

In a planar lens made of left-handed material (LHM), the rays converge to a focal point in the material and once again in free space. The problems exhibited by the planar lens are its great thickness, the long optical path length, and energy concentration in the LHM. We examine a bowl-shaped LHM lens with an index n = −1. In this lens, the back is a concave hemispherical surface and the rays never converge in the LHM, but in free space only. We also designed a quantized bowl-shaped LHM lens composed of multiple layers of thin LHM plates of uniform thickness. A bowl-shaped LHM lens quantized with more than 4 bits has a lens function similar to that of a smooth curved lens. The bowl-shaped lens is characterized by its thinness, its short optical path length, and the absence of energy concentration in the LHM. Furthermore, the quantized bowl-shaped LHM lens can be fabricated. Wave propagation through these lenses is numerically simulated using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method.     

Linearly polarised three-colour lasing emission from an evanescent wave pumped and gain coupled fibre laser

A novel Whispering--Gallery--Mode (WGM) fibre laser, emitting linearly polarised three-colour light, is demonstrated by pumping and gain coupling with evanescent waves. The pump light is longitudinally coupled into a bare optical fibre immersed in a dye solution of lower refractive index. The dye molecules around the bare fibre are excited by the evanescent waves of pump light when they propagate along the fibre in a total internal reflection. When the pump beam within the fibre is a meridian beam, the WGM lasing emission from the fibre laser is a linearly polarised transverse electric wave, while it is a mixed wave of the linearly polarised transverse electric and magnetic waves if the pump beam is a skew beam within the fibre. Because the excited molecules are located within the evanescent field of WGM, a good spatial overlap between the dye gain and the evanescent field leads to a high pumping efficiency and a longer gain distance along the fibre. Once the bare fibre is inserted into three glass capillaries filled with Rhodamine 6G, 610 and 640 dye solutions, respectively, WGM laser oscillations at the wavelengths of 567--575, 605--614 and 656--666~nm occur simultaneously, and a linearly polarised three-colour lasing emission is achieved in a single optical fibre.     

Low-frequency sound transmission through a gas-solid interface

Sound transmission through gas-solid interfaces is usually very weak because of the large contrast in wave impedances at the interface. Here, it is shown that diffraction effects can lead to a dramatic increase in the transparency of gas-solid interfaces at low frequencies, resulting in the bulk of energy emitted by compact sources within a solid being radiated into a gas. The anomalous transparency is made possible by power fluxes in evanescent body waves and by excitation of interface waves. Sound transmission into gas is found to be highly sensitive to absorption of elastic waves within a solid.     

Negative refraction in two-dimensional photonic crystals

We present some of our recent results for negative refraction in photonic crystals. The concept of negative refraction in photonic crystals is firstly introduced. Then, the propagation of electromagnetic waves in photonic crystals is systematically studied. By the layer Korringa–Kohn–Rostoker method, the coupling efficiency between external plane waves and the Bloch waves in photonic crystals is investigated. It is found that the coupling coefficient is highly angular dependent even for an interface between air with n=1 and a photonic crystal with effective index n_eff=-1. It is also shown that, for point imaging by a photonic crystal slab, owing to the negative refraction, the influence of the surface termination on the transmission and the imaging quality is significant. Finally, we present results experimentally demonstrating negative refraction in a two-dimensional photonic crystal at optical communication wavelengths. PACS 42.70.Qs; 41.85.Ct; 42.30.Va     

Optical Trapping with Focused Surface Waves

Near-field optical trapping can be realized with focused evanescent waves that are excited at the water–glass interface due to the total internal reflection, or with focused plasmonic waves excited on the water–gold interface. Herein, the performance of these two kinds of near-field optical trapping techniques is compared using the same optical microscope configuration. Experimental results show that only a single-micron polystyrene bead can be trapped by the focused evanescent waves, whereas many beads are simultaneously attracted to the center of the excited region by focused plasmonic waves. This difference in trapping behavior is analyzed from the electric field intensity distributions of these two kinds of focused surface waves and the difference in trapping behavior is attributed to photothermal effects due to the light absorption by the gold film.     

Left-handedness without absorption in the four-level Y-type atomic medium

In this paper we have investigated three external fields interacting with the four-level Y-type atomic system described by the density-matrix approach. The results show that left-handedness with zero absorption is achieved. The zero absorption property displays the possibility of manipulation by varying the phase and the intensity of the coupling field. Also, the zero absorption property may be used to amplify the evanescent waves that have been lost in imaging by traditional lenses. We propose an approach to obtain a negative refractive medium with zero absorption and the possibility of enhanceingthe imaging resolution in realizing `superlenses'.     

A new approach to a practical subwavelength resolving microscope

Superresolution depends on near-field capture and transfer of high spatial frequencies from the scattering object. These evanescent waves are transferred to a near-field image domain using a negative index material. Measuring images with subwavelength scale resolution in the near field by scanning is not practical and ignores inevitable object–lens–image coupling phenomena as well as the need to employ inverse scattering algorithms. An alternative approach based on compressive sampling permits the use of a single fixed detector. Traditionally, in such a system, an image-bearing wavefront is projected onto a series of patterns (= basis functions) and the transmitted light integrated by a lens onto a single-point detector. Image reconstruction is possible by weighting each basis function with its measured coefficient and summing, including basis functions representing evanescent waves. We employ a single fixed detector in the back focal plane of a negative index concave lens and basis functions realized by structured illumination from combinations of a set of discrete sources. We have investigated this as an approach to recover subwavelength scale details about a scattering object and report our results.     

A scheme of plasmon excitation at the interface between metal and a photonic crystal

A one-dimensional photonic crystal and an incident light wave that is noncollinear with the permittivity gradient of the crystal are considered. On the basis of coupled-mode equations, eigensolutions for the fields are obtained; a special focus is placed on evanescent waves. Field transformation at the crystal-air and crystal-metal interfaces is analyzed. A condition for the resonance excitation of surface waves at the interface between a crystal and a metal is obtained, and an estimate is given for the efficiency of transformation of the original traveling wave into a surface wave.     

Structure for localizing electromagnetic waves with a left-handed-medium slab and a conducting plane

A new structure is proposed for localizing electromagnetic waves and energies with a left-handed-medium (LHM) slab and a perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) plane. When a current source is placed in front of a perfectly matched LHM slab with negative permittivity -epsilon0 and negative permeability -mu0 and a PEC plane is placed at the image point, we show rigorously that all the electromagnetic waves are confined in a region between the source and the PEC plane, and the fields outside the region are completely zero. Such an energy-localization system would be useful in medical treatments that use concentrated optical and microwave energies. However, a perfectly matched LHM is unphysical and does not exist in nature. Hence we further study the loss and retardation effects of LHM on the energy localization. Numerical results are presented for the lossy LHM structure to demonstrate the energy localization.