Sir J.B. PENDRY

FRS, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, UK

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Title: Metamaterials, Non Linear Plasmonic Phenomena and Negative Refraction at Optical Frequencies

Negative refraction is a new phenomenon in optics that gives access to many remarkable possibilities. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the prescription for focussing light with resolution limited only by precision of manufacture, not by intrinsic physics. Demonstrations have been made for microwaves and even at optical frequencies but the latter are so far confined to very small distances of less than a micron. Here we propose a scheme designed to give negative refraction of light on everyday length scales. The scheme exploits the link between negative refraction and phase conjugation which can be represented as a transition between positive and negative frequency states, but requires non linearity. Metamaterials are ideally placed to enhance and exploit non linear phenomena. The sub wavelength structures that comprise metamaterials will typically concentrate the energy of incident radiation in a very small volume and this in turn leads to substantial enhancement of non linear effects. An experimental realisation is proposed and under ideal circumstances this lens can exhibit sub wavelength resolution limited only by the strength of the phase conjugated signal.