Multiple scattering: the key to unravel the subwavelength world from the far-field pattern of a scattered wave.

For more than a century the possibility of imaging the structure of a medium with diffracting wave fields has been limited by the tradeoff between resolution and imaging depth. While long wavelengths can penetrate deep into a medium, the resolution limit precludes the possibility of observing subwavelength structures. Near-field microscopy has recently demonstrated that the resolution limit can be overcome by bringing a probing sensor within one wavelength distance from the surface to be imaged. This paper extends the scope of near-field microscopy to the reconstruction of subwavelength structures from measurements performed in the far-field. It is shown that the distortion undergone by a wave field as it travels through an inhomogeneous medium and the subsequent generation of local evanescent fields encode subwavelength information in the far-field due to multiple scattering within the medium. This argument is proved theoretically and supported by a limited view experiment performed with elastic waves in which an image with a resolution better than a third of the wavelength is achieved.