Escalated Deep-Subwavelength Acoustic Imaging with Field Enhancement Inside a Metalens

Abstract

Super-resolution acoustic imaging with state-of-the-art spatial resolution (\ensuremath{\lambda}/50), with \ensuremath{\lambda} being the wavelength, is showcased with a holey-structured metalens. However, the imaging mechanism under unity transmission based on Fabry-Perot resonances means the metalens fundamentally suffers from narrow bandwidth and limited deep-subwavelength contrast, and therefore further advancement of deep-subwavelength imaging has been stalled. Here we break the barriers for deep-subwavelength acoustic imaging comprehensively in spatial resolution, resolving contrast, and working bandwidth, by exploiting field enhancement inside the metalens. A microscopic model is established to theoretically reveal the underlying physics for escalated deep-subwavelength acoustic imaging. For a proof-of-concept, the imaging performance of the proposed method is numerically proven and experimentally demonstrated. Specifically, a breakthrough resolution below \ensuremath{\lambda}/100 is achieved while resolving contrast is improved by at least 6.5 times and working bandwidth is broadened to approximately 25% of the operating frequency. Furthermore, pulsed acoustic imaging on the deep-subwavelength scale is showcased, which is an important step towards the practical application of the ultrahigh-resolution acoustic imaging technique. We believe the work presented here may greatly benefit a variety of fields in acoustics, such as visualizing subcutaneous structures in medical diagnosis and characterizing subsurface flaws in industrial nondestructive evaluation.