Spiral hyperlens with enhancements of image resolution and magnification

Abstract

A subwavelength spiral hyperlens that is able to image beyond the diffraction limit is studied. The spiral hyperlens is made from an anisotropic metamaterial with a hyperbolic dispersion relation in which the evanescent wave is converted into a propagating wave. Therefore, the propagating wave can be processed by conventional optical systems outside of the spiral hyperlens. The possibility of using a cylindrical hyperlens for overcoming the diffraction limit has been proven analytically and experimentally. In this study, we designed two types of spiral hyperlenses composed of a spiral periodic stack of silver and alumina multilayers. A spiral hyperlens utilizes the spiral geometry to magnify the objects. In comparison with a cylindrical hyperlens, a spiral hyperlens has improved performance in terms of higher image resolution and better image magnifications. Numerical simulations illustrate that the far-field imaging resolution of cylindrical spiral hyperlens is no greater than 110 nm at 365 nm working wavelength.