  Polaritons in two-dimensional materials provide extreme light confinement
that is difficult to achieve with metal plasmonics. However, such tight
confinement inevitably increases optical losses through various damping
channels. Here we demonstrate that hyperbolic phonon polaritons in hexagonal
boron nitride can overcome this fundamental trade-off. Among two observed
polariton modes, featuring a symmetric and antisymmetric charge distribution,
the latter exhibits lower optical losses and tighter polariton confinement.
Far-field excitation and detection of this high-momenta mode becomes possible
with our resonator design that can boost the coupling efficiency via virtual
polariton modes with image charges that we dub image polaritons. Using these
image polaritons, we experimentally observe a record-high effective index of up
to 132 and quality factors as high as 501. Further, our phenomenological theory
suggests an important role of hyperbolic surface scattering in the damping
process of hyperbolic phonon polaritons.
