Superlens made of a metamaterial with extreme effective parameters

Abstract

We propose a superlens formed by an ultradense array of crossed metallic wires. It is demonstrated that, due to the anomalous interaction between crossed wires, the structured substrate is characterized by an anomalously high index of refraction and supports strongly confined guided modes with very short propagation wavelengths. It is theoretically proven that a planar slab of such structured material makes a superlens that may compensate for the attenuation introduced by free-space propagation and restore the subwavelength details of the source. The bandwidth of the proposed device can be quite significant since the response of the structured substrate is nonresonant. The theoretical results are fully supported by numerical simulations. © 2008 The American Physical Society.