NEAR-FIELD OPTICS INVERSE-SCATTERING RECONSTRUCTION OF REFLECTIVE SURFACES

We show that, at multiple scattering, the scattered field amplitude at a plane close to the surface of a perfectly reflecting grating, and thus the image of the grating, does not at all resemble the grating profile. We demonstrate the performance of an inverse-scattering procedure that applies within the range of validity of the Rayleigh hypothesis and that permits the attainment of superresolution in the reconstructed surface profile. This is the first solution, to our knowledge, for cases in which the near-field optics methods established so far do not work.