A perfect lens with unlimited resolution has always posed a challenge to both theoretical and experimental physicists. Recent developments in optical meta-materials promise an attractive approach towards perfect lenses using negative refraction to overcome the diffraction limit, improving resolution. However, those artificially engineered meta-materials usually company by high losses from metals and are extremely difficult to fabricate. An alternative proposal on using negative refraction by four-wave mixing has attracted much interests recently, though most of existing experiments still require metals and none of them has been implemented for an optical lens. Here we experimentally demonstrate a metalfree flat lens for the first time using negative refraction by degenerate four-wave mixing with a simple thin glass slide. We realize optical lensing utilizing a nonlinear refraction law, which may have potential applications in infrared microscopy and super-resolution imaging.

Date Published: 5 September 2014
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9198, Ultrafast Nonlinear Imaging and Spectroscopy II, 919814 (5 September 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2060998

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9198:
Ultrafast Nonlinear Imaging and Spectroscopy II
Zhiwen Liu, Editor(s)