Design of achromatic augmented reality visors based on composite metasurfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel composite metasurface design for an ultra-compact augmented reality visor that corrects chromatic aberrations, offers a large field of view, and maintains high see-through quality, enhancing AR user experience.

Contribution

The paper presents a new composite metasurface design enabling a compact AR visor with corrected chromatic aberrations and a large field of view, improving upon existing AR optical systems.

Findings

Achromatic correction over visible wavelengths

Field of view >77 degrees horizontally and vertically

High transmission (>70%) with minimal wavefront error

Abstract

A compact near-eye visor (NEV) system that can guide light from a display to the eye could transform augmented reality (AR) technology. Unfortunately, existing implementations of such an NEV either suffer from small field of view or chromatic aberrations. See-through quality and bulkiness further make the overall performance of the visors unsuitable for a seamless user experience. Metasurfaces are an emerging class of nanophotonic elements that can dramatically reduce the size of optical elements while enhancing functionality. In this paper, we present a design of composite metasurfaces for an ultra-compact NEV. We simulate the performance of a proof-of-principle visor corrected for chromatic aberrations while providing a large display field of view (>77{\deg} both horizontally and vertically), good see-through quality (>70% transmission and less than a wavelength root mean-square (RMS) wavefront error over the whole visible wavelength range), as needed for an immersive AR experience.