Reply to “Comment on ‘Multiple scattering: The key to unravel the subwavelength world from the far-field pattern of a scattered wave’ ”

Abstract

In a recent paper [F. Simonetti, Phys. Rev. E 73, 036619 (2006)], it is suggested that multiple scattering is the key to achieve subwavelength resolution imaging from far-field measurements. In support of this claim, the same paper also reports on an experiment in which a resolution better $\ensuremath{\lambda}∕3$ is achieved, $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ being the wavelength of the probing wave. In a Comment [J. de Rosny and C. Prada, preceding paper, Phys. Rev. E. 75, 048601 (2007)], this argument is disputed and it is claimed that subwavelength resolution is possible under the Born approximation. However, in de Rosny and Prada the effect of measurement noise, which is central to the use of subwavelength resolution techniques in practice, is not considered. By means of an example similar to that discussed in de Rosny and Prada, this paper confirms that multiple scattering is indeed a ``key'' factor to achieve subwavelength resolution with real, noisy measurements.