A spherical perfect lens

Abstract

It has been recently proved that a slab of negative refractive index material acts as a perfect lens in that it makes accessible the sub-wavelength image information contained in the evanescent modes of a source. Here we elaborate on perfect lens solutions to spherical shells of negative refractive material where magnification of the near-field images becomes possible. The negative refractive materials then need to be spatially dispersive with $ε(r) \sim 1/r$ and $μ(r)\sim 1/r$. We concentrate on lens-like solutions for the extreme near-field limit. Then the conditions for the TM and TE polarized modes become independent of $μ$ and $ε$ respectively.