ABSTRACT
Optical microscopy is one of the oldest research tools. Its development began in about 1590 with the observation by the Dutch spectacle maker Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans that combinations of lenses in a tube made small objects appear larger. In this microscope design the dispersion behavior of surface plasmon polaritons propagating in the boundary between a thin metal film and a dielectric was exploited to use the 2D optics of SPPs with a short wavelength to produce a magnified local image of an object on the surface. Abbe's resolution limit simply does not exist. Optical energy propagates through such a metamaterial in the form of radial rays. Moreover, it is easy to demonstrate that a pattern of polymethyl methacrylate stripes formed on a metal surface behaves as a 2D plasmonic equivalent of 3D hyperbolic metamaterial. The magnifying action and the imaging mechanism of the hyperlens have been further verified by control experiments.
