title: Finite-size effects of a left-handed material slab on the image quality.
abstract: The characteristics of an imaging system formed by a left-handed material (LHM) slab of finite length are studied, and the influence of the finite length of the slab on the image quality is analyzed. Unusual phenomena such as surface bright spots and negative energy stream at the image side are observed and explained as the cavity effects of surface plasmons excited by the evanescent components of the incident field. For a thin LHM slab, the cavity effects are found rather sensitive to the length of the slab; the bright spots on the bottom surface of the slab may stretch to the image plane and degrade the image quality.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Joint Research Center of Photonics of the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Sailing
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Linfang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shen