Subwavelength internal imaging by means of the wire medium

Abstract

Evanescent wave amplification is observed, for the first time to our knowledge, inside a half-wavelength-thick wire medium slab used for subwavelength imaging. The wire medium is analyzed using both a spatially dispersive finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and a full-wave commercial electromagnetic simulator CST Microwave Studio. In this work we demonstrate that subwavelength details of a source placed at a distance of one-tenth of a wavelength from a wire medium slab can be detected inside the slab with a resolution of approximately one-tenth of a wavelength in spite of the fact that they cannot be resolved at the front interface of the device, due to the rapid decay of evanescent spatial harmonics in free space.