Inverse designed extended depth of focus meta-optics for broadband imaging in the visible

• Main Authors: Bayati, Elyas (Author), Pestourie, Raphael (Author), Colburn, Shane (Author), Lin, Zin (Author), Johnson, Steven G (Contributor), Majumdar, Arka (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2021-10-01T15:28:50Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 We report an inverse-designed, high numerical aperture (∼0.44), extended depth of focus (EDOF) meta-optic, which exhibits a lens-like point spread function (PSF). The EDOF meta-optic maintains a focusing efficiency comparable to that of a hyperboloid metalens throughout its depth of focus. Exploiting the extended depth of focus and computational post processing, we demonstrate broadband imaging across the full visible spectrum using a 1 mm, f/1 meta-optic. Unlike other canonical EDOF meta-optics, characterized by phase masks such as a log-asphere or cubic function, our design exhibits a highly invariant PSF across ∼290 nm optical bandwidth, which leads to significantly improved image quality, as quantified by structural similarity metrics.