TY - JOUR

T1 - A millimetre-wave cuboid solid immersion lens with intensity-enhanced amplitude mask apodization

AU - Yue, Liyang

AU - Yan, Bing

AU - Monks, James

AU - Dhama, Rakesh

AU - Wang, Zengbo

AU - Minin, Oleg

AU - Minin, Igor

PY - 2018/6

Y1 - 2018/6

N2 - Photonic jet is a narrow, highly intensive, weak-diverging beam propagating into a background medium, and can be produced by a cuboid solid immersion lens (SIL) in both transmission and reflection modes. Amplitude mask apodization is an optical method to further improve the spatial resolution of a SIL imaging system via reduction of waist size of photonic jet, but always leading to intensity-loss due to central masking of the incoming plane wave. In this letter, we report a particularly sized millimetre-wave cuboid SIL with the intensity-enhanced amplitude mask apodization for the first time. It is able to simultaneously deliver extra intensity enhancement and waist narrowing to the produced photonic jet. Both numerical simulation and experimental verification of the intensity-enhanced apodization effect are demonstrated using a copper-masked Teflon cuboid SIL with 22 mm side length under radiation of a plane wave with 8 mm wavelength. Peak intensity enhancement and the lateral resolution of the optical system increase by about 36.0 % and 36.4 % in this approach, respectively.

AB - Photonic jet is a narrow, highly intensive, weak-diverging beam propagating into a background medium, and can be produced by a cuboid solid immersion lens (SIL) in both transmission and reflection modes. Amplitude mask apodization is an optical method to further improve the spatial resolution of a SIL imaging system via reduction of waist size of photonic jet, but always leading to intensity-loss due to central masking of the incoming plane wave. In this letter, we report a particularly sized millimetre-wave cuboid SIL with the intensity-enhanced amplitude mask apodization for the first time. It is able to simultaneously deliver extra intensity enhancement and waist narrowing to the produced photonic jet. Both numerical simulation and experimental verification of the intensity-enhanced apodization effect are demonstrated using a copper-masked Teflon cuboid SIL with 22 mm side length under radiation of a plane wave with 8 mm wavelength. Peak intensity enhancement and the lateral resolution of the optical system increase by about 36.0 % and 36.4 % in this approach, respectively.

U2 - 10.1007/s10762-018-0479-1

DO - 10.1007/s10762-018-0479-1

M3 - Article

VL - 39

SP - 546

EP - 552

JO - Journal of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves

JF - Journal of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves

SN - 1866-6892

IS - 6

ER -