Why optics needs thickness

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the minimum required thickness of optical devices can be deduced from diffraction principles and a new concept called overlapping non-locality, influencing design constraints across various wave-based systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to determine minimum optical thickness based on diffraction and a new non-locality concept, applicable before device design.

Findings

Minimum thickness limits derived from diffraction and non-locality.

The concept applies broadly to cameras, metasurfaces, and wave systems.

Provides a rigorous mathematical framework for optical design constraints.

Abstract

We show why and when optics needs thickness as well as width or area. Wave diffraction explains the fundamental need for area or diameter of a lens or aperture to achieve some resolution or number of pixels in microscopes and cameras. Now we show that, if we know what the optics is to do, even before design, we can also deduce minimum required thickness. This limit comes from diffraction together with a novel concept called "overlapping non-locality" C that can be deduced rigorously just from the mathematical description of what the device is to do. C expresses how much the input regions for different output regions overlap. This limit applies broadly to optics from cameras to metasurfaces, and to wave systems generally.