Beating spectral bandwidth limits for large aperture broadband nano-optics
Johannes E. Fröch, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Jipeng Sun, Ethan Tseng, Shane Colburn, Alan Zhan, Forrest Miller, Anna Wirth-Singh, Quentin A. A. Tanguy, Zheyi Han, K. F. Böhringer, Felix Heide, Arka Majumdar
Abstract
Flat optics have been proposed as an attractive approach for the implementation of new imaging and sensing modalities to replace and augment refractive optics. However, chromatic aberrations impose fundamental limitations on diffractive flat optics. As such, true broadband high-quality imaging has thus far been out of reach for fast f-numbers, large aperture, flat optics. In this work, we overcome intrinsic spectral bandwidth limitations, achieving broadband imaging in the visible wavelength range with a flat meta-optic, co-designed with computational reconstruction. We derive the necessary conditions for a broadband, 1 cm aperture, f/2 flat optic, with a diagonal field of view of 30° and average system MTF contrast of 20% or larger for a spatial frequency of 100 lp/mm in the visible band (>30% for <70 lp/mm). Finally, we use a coaxial, dual-aperture system to train the broadband imaging meta-optic with a learned reconstruction method operating on pair-wise captured imaging data. Fundamentally, our work challenges the entrenched belief of the inability of capturing high-quality, full-color images using a single large aperture meta-optic. Large aperture, diffractive metaoptics for broadband imaging have posed an outstanding challenge for miniaturized optics. In this work, Fröch, Chakravarthula, and colleagues address these challenges and successfully demonstrate a meta-optic with a 1 cm, f/2 aperture for full color imaging.