Design of an achromatic, high numerical aperture optical assembly with a solid immersion lens

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel achromatic solid immersion lens assembly that significantly reduces chromatic aberrations, enabling broadband confocal spectroscopy with diffraction-limited performance over a wide spectral range.

Contribution

It introduces an optimized achromatic lens design combining a solid immersion lens with a cemented doublet for broadband applications.

Findings

Achieves diffraction-limited spot size over 100 nm bandwidth.

Provides an achromatic range between 600 and 750 nm.

Enhances light collection efficiency for nanoscale emitters.

Abstract

Efficiently collecting light emitted or scattered from nanoscale systems, which can be embedded in a high-index medium, is a challenge for fundamental spectroscopic studies and commercial applications of quantum dots, color centers, single molecules, plasmonic antennas, etc. Solid immersion lenses offer a powerful solution to increase the numerical aperture of the optical system, while being robust and compatible with cryogenic temperatures. However, they suffer from strong chromatic aberrations, limiting their applications to narrow-band excitation and emission spectral windows. Here, we design and optimize an achromatic lens assembly based on a solid immersion lens and a cemented doublet for broadband confocal spectroscopy. We provide an example with an achromatic range between 600 and 750 nm and show that it achieves diffraction limited spot size in excitation and in collection (reimaging of a point source) over more than 100 nm bandwidth. We expect our results to be useful to the broad community involved in spectroscopy and technological applications of nano-emitters for single photon sources, quantum information processing and quantum sensing.