ULTRA-HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGING DEVICES

摘要

The invention provides an ultra-high numerical aperture imaging device (1) comprising two rotationally symmetric curved mirrors (11b, 12b), which can b e used to achieve very high concentrations of light or other sorts of wave (or other sorts of physical entities that satisfy equivalent "ballistic" equatio ns of motion) or can be used in reverse to form a beam that has a small angle spread, and which can be combined with a further plane, partially transparen t mirror (if necessary with additional components to attenuate and rotate the polarisation of the waves involved), to create a device able to achieve a materially better resolution than that implied by the traditional Rayleigh resolution criterion. A detailed method for designing such a device is also disclosed.