A Metalens with a Near-Unity Numerical Aperture
At a Glance
Section titled āAt a Glanceā| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2018-02-27 |
| Journal | Nano Letters |
| Authors | RamĆ³n PaniaguaāDomĆnguez, Yefeng Yu, Egor Khaidarov, Sumin Choi, Victor Leong |
| Institutions | Nanyang Technological University, Data Storage Institute |
| Citations | 486 |
Abstract
Section titled āAbstractāThe numerical aperture (NA) of a lens determines its ability to focus light and its resolving capability. Having a large NA is a very desirable quality for applications requiring small light-matter interaction volumes or large angular collections. Traditionally, a large NA lens based on light refraction requires precision bulk optics that ends up being expensive and is thus also a specialty item. In contrast, metasurfaces allow the lens designer to circumvent those issues producing high-NA lenses in an ultraflat fashion. However, so far, these have been limited to numerical apertures on the same order of magnitude as traditional optical components, with experimentally reported NA values of <0.9. Here we demonstrate, both numerically and experimentally, a new approach that results in a diffraction-limited flat lens with a near-unity numerical aperture (NA > 0.99) and subwavelength thickness (ā¼Ī»/3), operating with unpolarized light at 715 nm. To demonstrate its imaging capability, the designed lens is applied in a confocal configuration to map color centers in subdiffractive diamond nanocrystals. This work, based on diffractive elements that can efficiently bend light at angles as large as 82Ā°, represents a step beyond traditional optical elements and existing flat optics, circumventing the efficiency drop associated with the standard, phase mapping approach.
Tech Support
Section titled āTech SupportāOriginal Source
Section titled āOriginal SourceāReferences
Section titled āReferencesā- 1999 - Principles of Optics [Crossref]