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Optical superoscillation technologies beyond the diffraction limit

Nature Reviews Physics volume 4, pages 16–32 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 13 May 2022

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Abstract

Optical superoscillations are rapid, subwavelength spatial variations of the intensity and phase of light, occurring in complex electromagnetic fields formed by the interference of several coherent waves. The discovery of superoscillations stimulated a revision of the limits of classical electromagnetism — in particular, the studies of phenomena such as unlimitedly small energy hotspots, phase singularities, energy backflow, anomalously high wavevectors and their intriguing similarities to the evanescent plasmonic fields on metals. In recent years, the understanding of superoscillatory light has led to the development of superoscillatory lensing, imaging and metrology technologies. Dielectric, metallic and metamaterial nanostructured superoscillatory lenses have been introduced that are able to create hotspots smaller than allowed by conventional lenses. Far-field, label-free, non-intrusive deeply subwavelength super-resolution imaging and metrology techniques that exploit high light localization and rapid variation of phase in superoscillatory fields have also been developed, including new approaches based on artificial intelligence. We review the fundamental properties of superoscillatory optical fields and examine emerging technological applications.

Key points

  • Light can be focused into a sub-diffraction superoscillatory hotspot of any shape and size beyond the ‘diffraction limit’ by lenses constructed as a gradient, metamaterial or binary intensity and phase masks.

  • Superoscillatory lenses can be used for label-free, far-field, non-invasive imaging with super-resolution that is determined by the size of the superoscillatory hotspot.

  • The structure of superoscillatory optical fields has striking similarities with plasmonic fields and contains singularities and deeply subwavelength features of rapid phase variation and energy backflow. These features can be used in nanoscale optical metrology.

  • The high sensitivity of scattering of superoscillatory light to the object’s shape features can be used for optical imaging with deeply subwavelength, molecular-level resolution, in which reconstructing the object from the scattering pattern is performed by machine learning.

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Fig. 1: Functions can oscillate faster than their highest Fourier harmonics.
Fig. 2: Static superoscillatory lenses.
Fig. 3: Subwavelength features in complex light fields created by interference of 50 coherent scalar plane waves.
Fig. 4: Similarities between plasmonic fields at metal interfaces and superoscillatory field in free space.
Fig. 5: ‘Optical ruler’ metrology.
Fig. 6: Superoscillatory imaging.
Fig. 7: Deeply subwavelength topological microscopy with a superoscillatory light field.
Fig. 8: Superoscillations beyond optical imaging and metrology.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to E. Rogers, P. J. S. Smith, N. Papasimakis, I. Kuprov, Y. Shen, B. Ou, E. Aik Chan and C. Rendon Barraza for discussions and S. Varier for preparation of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (grant nos. EP/M009122/1 and EP/T02643X/1), the Singapore National Research Foundation (grant no. NRF-CRP23-2019-0006), the Singapore Ministry of Education (grant no. MOE2016-T3-1-006) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Singapore (grant no. SERC A1685b0005). G.Y. is also supported by the National Innovative Talents Program of China.

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  1. Guanghui Yuan

    Present address: Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

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  1. Optoelectronics Research Centre and Centre for Photonic Metamaterials, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Nikolay I. Zheludev

  2. Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies, The Photonics Institute, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Nikolay I. Zheludev & Guanghui Yuan

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Zheludev, N.I., Yuan, G. Optical superoscillation technologies beyond the diffraction limit. Nat Rev Phys 4, 16–32 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00382-7

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