Correction of aberrations via polarization in single layer metalenses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that polarization-controlled metalenses can correct multiple optical aberrations and switch between high resolution and wide field of view in a single, compact element, advancing miniaturized optical systems.

Contribution

It introduces a polarization-based design for metalenses that corrects aberrations and enables mode switching, a novel approach compared to traditional bulk optics.

Findings

Metalenses can correct spherical and off-axis aberrations using polarization control.

A single metalens can switch between high resolution and wide field of view modes.

The approach simplifies optical system design and miniaturization.

Abstract

The correction of multiple aberrations in an optical system requires different optical elements, which increases its cost and complexity. Metasurfaces hold great promise to providing new functionality for miniaturized and low-cost optical systems. A key advantage over their bulk counterparts is the metasurface's ability to respond to the polarization of light, which adds a new degree of freedom to the optical design. Here, we show that polarization control enables a form-birefringent metalens to correct for both spherical and off-axis aberrations using a single element only, which is not possible with bulk optics. The metalens encodes two phase profiles onto the same surface, thus allowing switching from high resolution to wide field of view operation. Such ability to obtain both high resolution and wide field of view in a single layer is an important step towards integration of miniaturized optical systems, which may find many applications, e.g., in microscopy and endoscopy.