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Updated: May 23, 2026

Femtosecond Laser Filaments for Use in Sub-Diffraction-Limited Imaging and Remote Sensing
Published on: April 25, 2019
"Digitally" addressable focusing of light into a subwavelength hot spot
T S Kao1, E T F Rogers, J Y Ou
1Optoelectronics Research Centre and Centre for Photonic Metamaterials, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We show that a plasmonic metamaterial can act as a far-field to near-field transformer that focuses a free-space beam of light into a subwavelength energy hot spot at a prescribed location with a spot size only a small fraction of the wavelength. The hot spot position on the metamaterial can be prescribed and moved at will from one metamolecule of the array to another in a "digital" fashion simply by modulating the input phase profile, thus providing new opportunities for imaging and optical data processing.
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