Imaging in the visible wavelength range through anisotropic layered flat lens operating in the canalization regime

We study the propagation of light through silver-dielectric layered structures operating in the canalization regime. These structures have an extremely large value of the effective permittivity in the propagation direction. Therefore they are able to couple a broad spectrum of incident spatial frequencies, including evanescent waves, into propagating modes. As a result, subwavelength resolution at the back interface of the structure is observed. We consider multilayers made of silver and several dielectric materials, namely TiO2, SrTiO3 and GaP. We optimise the multilayers geometry in order to obtain the best resolution accompanied with a large value of the effective skin depth. We use the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the point spread function to measure the resolution. The effective skin depth is calculated both approximately based on the effective medium model and rigorously by analysing the amplitude decay rate in an infinite periodic layered structure.

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