Salvatore Savo

A super-oscillatory lens optical microscope for subwavelength imaging

The past decade has seen an intensive effort to achieve optical imaging resolution beyond the diffraction limit. Apart from the Pendry-Veselago negative index superlens, implementation of which in optics faces challenges of losses and as yet unattainable fabrication finesse, other super-resolution approaches necessitate the lens either to be in the near proximity of the object or manufactured on it, or work only for a narrow class of samples, such as intensely luminescent or sparse objects. Here we report a new super-resolution microscope for optical imaging that beats the diffraction limit of conventional instruments and the recently demonstrated near-field optical superlens and hyperlens. This non-invasive subwavelength imaging paradigm uses a binary amplitude mask for direct focusing of laser light into a subwavelength spot in the post-evanescent field by precisely tailoring the interference of a large number of beams diffracted from a nanostructured mask. The new technology, which--in principle--has no physical limits on resolution, could be universally used for imaging at any wavelength and does not depend on the luminescence of the object, which can be tens of micrometres away from the mask. It has been implemented as a straightforward modification of a conventional microscope showing resolution better than λ/6.

Super-oscillatory optical needle

Super-oscillatory optical lenses have recently been shown to achieve subwavelength focusing and have been used for super-resolution imaging. However, the subwavelength hotspots created by these lenses are always accompanied by sidebands containing a significant fraction of the optical energy and are highly localised in the axial direction. Here, we report a class of super-oscillatory lenses that form extended subwavelength optical needles on a 15λ field of view.

Transient heat flux shielding using thermal metamaterials

We have developed a heat shield based on a metamaterial engineering approach to shield a region from transient diffusive heat flow. The shield is designed with a multilayered structure to prescribe the appropriate spatial profile for heat capacity, density, and thermal conductivity of the effective medium. The heat shield was experimentally compared to other isotropic materials.

Many-body subradiant excitations in metamaterial arrays: experiment and theory

Subradiant excitations, originally predicted by Dicke, have posed a long-standing challenge in physics owing to their weak radiative coupling to environment. Here we engineer massive coherently driven classical subradiance in planar metamaterial arrays as a spatially extended eigenmode comprising over 1000 metamolecules. By comparing the near- and far-field response in large-scale numerical simulations with those in experimental observations we identify strong evidence for classically correlated multimetamolecule subradiant states that dominate the total excitation energy. We show that similar spatially extended many-body subradiance can also exist in plasmonic metamaterial arrays at optical frequencies.

Dataset for Many-body subradiant excitations in metamaterial arrays: Experiment and theory

Dataset supports: Jenkins, S.et al (2017). Many-body subradiant excitations in metamaterial arrays: Experiment and theory. Physical Review Letters.

Light localization in disordered metamaterials

For the first time we demonstrate localization of electromagnetic radiation in disordered planar metamaterials. The statistics of near-field intensity indicate that the localization is linked to subradiant modes in the metamolecules.