Experimental realization of supergrowing fields

Abstract

Supergrowth refers to the local amplitude growth rate of a signal being faster than its fastest Fourier mode. In contrast, superoscillation pertains to the variation of the phase. Compared to the latter, supergrowth can have exponentially higher intensities and promises improvement over superoscillation-based superresolution imaging. Here, we demonstrate the experimental synthesis of controlled supergrowing fields with a maximum growth rate of ~19.1 times the system-bandlimit. Our work is an essential step toward realizing supergrowth-based far-field superresolution imaging.