  The characteristics of an imaging system formed by a slab of a lossy
left-handed material (LHM) are studied. The transfer function of the LHM
imaging system is written in an appropriate product form with each term having
a clear physical interpretation. A tiny loss of the LHM may suppress the
transmission of evanescent waves through the LHM slab and this is explained
physically. An analytical expression for the resolution of the imaging system
is derived. It is shown that it is impossible to make a subwavelength imaging
by using a realistic LHM imaging system unless the LHM slab is much thinner
than the wavelength.
