Far-field Perfect Imaging with Time Modulated Gratings

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that time-modulated diffraction gratings can achieve perfect far-field imaging from a single spatial point measurement, enabling super-resolution and ultra-fast imaging through coupling evanescent modes to propagative orders.

Contribution

It introduces the use of time-modulated gratings for perfect far-field imaging and combines them with compressive sensing for efficient image recovery, a novel approach in optical imaging.

Findings

Time-modulated gratings enable perfect far-field imaging.

Single-point measurements can recover symmetric images.

Combining spatial and time gratings allows full image reconstruction.

Abstract

We study the capabilities of time-modulated diffraction gratings as imaging devices. It is shown that a time-dependent but transversally homogeneous slab can be used to make a perfect image of an object in the far-field, since all the evanescent modes couple to propagative time-diffracted orders. It is found that, if the image to be obtained is axially symmetric, it can be recovered by measuring the time-signal at a single point, without the need of performing a spatial scan, so that time gratings can act as well as single-pixel imaging devices. In the case of having an object without axial symmetry, the time-grating can be combined with a spatial grating, and then the full image can be recovered again with a measurement at a single point. We apply the theory of compressive sensing to optimize the recovery method and numerical examples are provided. We show therefore that time-modulated gratings can be used to perfectly recover the image of an object in the far field and after measuring at a single point in the space, being therefore a promising approach to superesoloution and ultra-fast imaging.