defining a superlens operating regime for imaging fluorescent molecules定义一个完美透镜成像操作政权荧光分子.pdfVIP

Defining a Superlens Operating Regime for Imaging Fluorescent Molecules Kareem Elsayad*, Katrin G. Heinze Optical Engineering, Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Vienna, Austria Abstract It has been shown that thin metal-based films can at certain frequencies act as planar near-field lenses for certain polarization components. A desirable property of such ‘‘lenses’’ is that they can also enhance and focus some large transverse spatial frequency components which contain sub-diffraction limit details. Over the last decade there has been much work in optimizing designs to reduce effects (such as material losses and surface roughness) that are detrimental to image reconstruction. One design that can reduce some of these undesirable effects, and which has received a fair amount of attention recently, is the stacked metal-dielectric superlens. Here we theoretically explore the imaging ability of such a design for the specific purpose of imaging a fluorescent dye (the common bio-marker GFP) in the vicinity of the superlens surface. Our calculations take into consideration the interaction (damping) of an oscillating electric dipole with the metallic layers in the superlens. We also assume a Gaussian frequency distribution spectrum for the dipole. We treat the metallic- alloy and dielectric-alloy layers separately using an appropriate effective medium theory. The transmission properties are evaluated via Transfer matrix (T-matrix) calculations that were performed in the MatLabTM and MathCadTM environments. Our study shows that it is in principle possible to image fluorescent molecules using a simple bilayer planar superlens. We find that optimal parameters for such a superlens occur when the peak dipole emission-frequency is slightly offset from the Surface Plasmon resonance