Near-Field Optical Transfer Function for Far-Field Super-Resolution Imaging

The far-field superlens based on surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) has shown great application potential, but it is difficult and time-consuming to reconstruct the far-field image. We derive a near-field optical transfer function (NOTF) of a silver slab and analyse its validity so that accurate information of nano-scale object in the near-field can be computed rapidly. The NOTF is helpful not only for analysing the super-resolution imaging process in far-field, but also for providing a track to describe the transmission of optical information from near-field to far-field by using the optical transfer functions theory only.