superlensing tagged posts

Ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered the world of bacteria through a microscope in the late seventeenth century, humans have tried to look deeper into the world of the infinitesimally small.

There are, however, physical limits to how closely we can examine an object using traditional optical methods. This is known as the diffraction limit and is determined by the fact that light manifests as a wave...

This image shows theoretical (right) and experimental (left) iso-frequency contours of a photonic crystal slabs superimposed on each other. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A new technique developed by MIT researchers reveals the inner details of photonic crystals, synthetic materials whose exotic optical properties are the subject of widespread research. Photonic crystals are generally made by drilling millions of closely spaced, minuscule holes in a slab of transparent material, using variations of microchip-fabrication methods...