FOCUSING THE VERTICAL ELECTRIC DIPOLE RADIATION BY THE PENDRY LENS

Abstract

The flat lens conception was considered in the pioneering work of V.G. Veselago, who considered the possibility of electromagnetic waves propagation in media with simultaneously negative permittivity and permeability (according to modern terminology − in the left-handed metamaterials). Later, J.B. Pendry put forward the idea of the so-called "superlens", the resolution of which would exceed the diffraction limit. In view of the prospects for the practical applications it has caused a discussion on the possibility of anti-parallelism of phase and group velocities and the actual super-resolution implementation for the source in the form of a monopole. However, using the ray theory approximation reduced the generality of the results, neglecting losses radically distorted them, and errors in the theoretical analysis led to the wrong physical interpretation. In this paper, we obtained a rigorous solution to the problem of focusing radiation from elementary electric dipole located perpendicularly to the plane layer of finite thickness made of the left-handed metamaterial with absorption. Spatial distribution of the electromagnetic field in the layer, as well as the incident and reflected fields at various heights of the dipole, layer thickness and losses in each medium are numerically simulated. The analysis of the calculated spatial structure of the electromagnetic field confirmed the focusing ability of the interfaces between ordinary and left-handed media, as well as a flat lens.