Three-dimensional visible-light capsule enclosing perfect supersized darkness via antiresolution

Abstract

Supersized darkness in three dimensions surrounded by all light in free space is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally in the visible regime. The object staying in the darkness is similar to staying in an empty light capsule because light just bypasses it by resorting to destructive interference. A binary-optical system is designed and fabricated based on achieving antiresolution (AR), by which electromagnetic energy flux avoids and bends smoothly around a nearly perfect darkness region. AR remains an unexplored topic hitherto, in contrast to the super-resolution for realizing high spatial resolution. This novel scheme replies on smearing out the point spread function and thus poses less stringent limitations upon the object's size and position since the created dark (zero-field) area reach 8 orders of magnitude larger than λ2 in cross-sectional size. It functions very well with arbitrarily polarized beams in three dimensions, which is also frequency scalable in the whole electromagnetic spectrum. A binary-optical system is designed and fabricated based on achieving anti-resolution, by which electromagnetic energy flux avoids and bends smoothly around a nearly perfect darkness region. This scheme replies on smearing out the point spread function and thus poses less stringent limitations upon the object's size and position. It functions at a single input beam with arbitrary polarization in three dimensions, which is also frequency-scalable in the whole electromagnetic spectrum. © 2014 The Authors. Laser & Photonics Reviews published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA Weinheim.