Propagation of optical fields through a three-dimensional diffraction-compensating metamaterial

Abstract

We apply our recently developed analytical and numerical calculation techniques to design a low-loss optical metamaterial that eliminates optical diffraction for three-dimensional optical fields. The diffraction is suppressed for light propagating along the normal to the metamaterial surface and formed of TM-polarized plane-wave components. The effect is demonstrated by an example of divergence-free propagation of a radially polarized Laguerre-Gaussian beam. We also show that arbitrary optical images can be transferred through the material without distortion, if they are originally circularly polarized or unpolarized. Upon propagation, the images lose their TE-polarized components, but their shapes remain intact. Hence, the material acts as a new type of an optical polarizer.