A hybrid imaging system is a simultaneous physical arrangement of a refractive lens and a multilevel phase mask (MPM) as a diffractive optical element (DOE). The favorable properties of the hybrid setup are improved extended-depth-of-field (EDoF) imaging and low chromatic aberrations. We built a fully differentiable image formation model in order to use neural network techniques to optimize imaging. At the first stage, the design framework relies on the model-based approach with numerical simulation and end-to-end joint optimization of both MPM and imaging algorithms. In the second stage, MPM is fixed as found at the first stage, and the image processing is optimized experimentally using the CNN learning-based approach with MPM implemented by a spatial light modulator. The paper is concentrated on a comparative analysis of imaging accuracy and quality for design with various basic optical parameters: aperture size, lens focal length, and distance between MPM and sensor. We point out that the varying aperture size, lens focal length, and distance between MPM and sensor are for the first time considered for end-to-end optimization of EDoF. We numerically and experimentally compare the designs for visible wavelength interval [400-700]nm and the following EDoF ranges: [0.5-100]m for simulations and [0.5-1.9]m for experimental tests. This study concerns an application of hybrid optics for compact cameras with aperture [5-9] mm and distance between MPM and sensor [3-10]mm.
Metasurface optics have demonstrated vast potential for implementing traditional optical components in an ultra-compact and lightweight form factor. Metasurface lenses, also called metalenses, however, suffer from severe chromatic aberrations, posing serious limitations on their practical use. Existing approaches for circumventing such aberrations via dispersion engineering are limited to small apertures and often entails multiple scatterers per unit cell with small feature sizes. Here, we present an alternative technique to mitigate chromatic aberration and demonstrate high-quality, full-colo…
Over the recent years, there have been many reports of achromatic metalenses and diffractive lenses. However, very few (if any) practical applications of such achromatic flat lenses have been demonstrated, which raises questions about the potential of these lenses to provide solutions for real world cases which involve broadband illumination. A recent paper placed limits on the performance of achromatic metalenses. However, is this limit also valid for a diffractive lens? Not necessarily so. In this paper we derive the limits on the performance of achromatic diffractive lenses. In particular, …
Compound eyes found in insects provide intriguing sources of biological inspiration for miniaturized imaging systems. Inspired by such insect eye structures, we demonstrate an ultrathin arrayed camera enabled by a flat multilevel diffractive microlens array for super-resolution visible imaging. We experimentally demonstrated that the microlens array can achieve large fill factor (hexagonal close packing with pitch=120um), thickness of 2.6um, and diffraction-limited (strehl ratio = 0.88) achromatic performance in the visible band (450nm to 650nm). We also demonstrate super-resolution imaging wi…
We demonstrate an inverse designed achromatic, flat, polarization-insensitive diffractive optic element, i.e., multilevel diffractive lens (MDL), operating across a broadband range of UV light (250 nm - 400 nm) via numerical simulations. The simulated average on-axis focusing efficiency of the MDL is optimized to be as high as ~86%. We also investigate the off-axis focusing characteristics at different incident angles of the incoming UV radiation such that the MDL has a full field of view of 30 degrees. The simulated average off-axis focusing efficiency is ~67%, which is the highest reported t…
Recently, the multilevel diffractive lenses (MDLs) have attracted considerable attention mainly due to their superior wave focusing performance; however, efforts to correct the chromatic aberration are still in progress. Here, we demonstrate the numerical design and experimental demonstration of high-numerical aperture (NA) (${\sim}0.99$), diffraction-limited achromatic multilevel diffractive lens (AMDL) operating in microwave range $10 GHz$ - $14 GHz$. A multi-objective differential evolution (MO-DE) algorithm is incorporated with the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (3D FDTD) …
End-to-end optimization of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) profile through a digital differentiable model combined with computational imaging have gained an increasing attention in emerging applications due to the compactness of resultant physical setups. Despite recent works have shown the potential of this methodology to design optics, its performance in physical setups is still limited and affected by manufacturing artifacts of DOE, mismatch between simulated and resultant experimental point spread functions, and calibration errors. Additionally, the computational burden of the digital …
Tampere University（坦佩雷大学）；University of Utah（犹他大学）
Depth of field is an important factor of imaging systems that highly affects the quality of the acquired spatial information. Extended depth of field (EDoF) imaging is a challenging ill-posed problem and has been extensively addressed in the literature. We propose a computational imaging approach for EDoF, where we employ wavefront coding via a diffractive optical element (DOE) and we achieve deblurring through a convolutional neural network. Thanks to the end-to-end differentiable modeling of optical image formation and computational post-processing, we jointly optimize the optical design, i.…
We designed and fabricated a flat multi-level diffractive lens (MDL) that is achromatic in the SWIR band (875nm to 1675nm). The MDL had a focal length of 25mm, aperture diameter of 8.93mm and thickness of only 2.6um. By pairing the MDL with a SWIR image sensor, we also characterized its imaging performance in terms of the point-spread functions, modulation-transfer functions, and still and video imaging.
In this work, we propose a new diffractive trifocal intraocular lens design with focus extension, conceived to provide a high visual performance at intermediate distances. This design is based on a fractal structure known as the "Devil's staircase". To assess its optical performance, numerical simulations have been performed with a ray tracing program using the Liou-Brennan model eye under polychromatic illumination. The simulated through the focus visual acuity was the merit function employed to test its pupil-dependence and its behavior against decentering. A qualitative assessment of the mu…
A plethora of metalenses and diffractive lenses (flat lenses) have been demonstrated over the years. Recently, attempts have been made to stretch their performance envelope, particularly in the direction of wide-band achromatic performance. While achromatic behavior has been demonstrated, an actual improvement in imaging performance relative to conventional (non-chromatically corrected) flat lenses has not. The reasons for this are use of inappropriate performance metrics, lack of comparison to a baseline conventional design, and lack of a performance metric that combines signal-to-noise ratio…
Metasurface lenses, namely metalenses, are ultrathin planar nanostructures that are capable of manipulating the properties of incoming light and imparting lens-like wavefront to the output. Although they have shown promising potentials for the future miniaturization of optics, the chromatic aberration inherited from their diffractive nature plagues them towards many practical applications. Current solutions for creating achromatic metalenses usually require searching through a large number of meta-atoms to find designs that fulfill not only phase but phase dispersion requirements, which leads …
Dispersion engineering is essential to the performance of most modern optical systems including fiber-optic devices. Even though the chromatic dispersion of a meter-scale single-mode fiber used for endoscopic applications is negligible, optical lenses located on the fiber end face for optical focusing and imaging suffer from strong chromatic aberration. Here we present the design and nanoprinting of a 3D achromatic diffractive metalens on the end face of a single-mode fiber, capable of performing achromatic and polarization-insensitive focusing across the entire near-infrared telecommunication…
Recent theoretical work suggested upper bounds on the operating bandwidths of flat lenses. Here, we show how these bounds can be circumvented via a multi-level diffractive lens (MDL) of diameter = 100 mm, focal length = 200 mm, device thickness = 2.4μ m and operating bandwidth from ? = 400 nm to 800 nm. We further combine the MDL with a refractive lens to demonstrate a hybrid telescope. By appealing to coherence theory, we show that the upper bound on relative bandwidth is surprisingly independent of lens diameter or numerical aperture, but is only limited by the bandwidth of the image sensor.…
It is generally thought that correcting chromatic aberrations in imaging requires multiple surfaces. Here, we show that by allowing the phase in the image plane of a flat lens to be a free parameter, it is possible to correct chromatic aberrations over a large continuous bandwidth with a single diffractive surface. We experimentally demonstrate imaging using a single flat lens of diameter > 3mm, focal length = 5mm (NA = 0.3, f/1.59) that is achromatic from 0.45um to 1um. This combination of size, NA and operating bandwidth has not been demonstrated in a flat lens before. We experimentally char…
Multilevel diffractive lenses (MDLs) have emerged as an alternative to both conventional diffractive optical elements (DOEs) and metalenses for applications ranging from imaging to holographic and immersive displays. Recent work has shown that by harnessing structural parametric optimization of DOEs, one can design MDLs to enable multiple functionalities like achromaticity, depth of focus, wide-angle imaging, etc. with great ease in fabrication. Therefore, it becomes critical to understand how fabrication errors still do affect the performance of MDLs and numerically evaluate the trade-off bet…
The power-balanced hybrid optical imaging system is a special design of a diffractive computational camera, introduced in this paper, with image formation by a refractive lens and Multilevel Phase Mask (MPM). This system provides a long focal depth with low chromatic aberrations thanks to MPM and a high energy light concentration due to the refractive lens. We introduce the concept of optical power balance between the lens and MPM which controls the contribution of each element to modulate the incoming light. Additional unique features of our MPM design are the inclusion of quantization of the…
It is generally assumed that correcting chromatic aberrations in imaging requires optical elements. Here, we show that by allowing the phase in the image plane to be a free parameter, it is possible to correct chromatic variation of focal length over an extremely large bandwidth, from the visible (Vis) to the longwave infrared (LWIR) wavelengths using a single diffractive surface, i.e., a flat lens. Specifically, we designed, fabricated and characterized a flat, multi-level diffractive lens (MDL) with thickness £ 10μm, diameter ~1mm, and focal length = 18mm, which was constant over the operati…
In the absence of separate apertures, the size and focal length of a lens determines both its resolution and light-collection ability defined by numerical-aperture (NA) and f/#, respectively. We utilize free-form broadband-diffractive-optical elements (BDOEs) to create flat lenses that decouple NA from f#, whereby the resolution of the lens may be chosen independently from its light-collection ability. Specifically, we designed, fabricated and characterized three BDOE lenses operating in the visible band (450nm-750nm), each with f/11.25, but with NAs of 0.00075, 0.0067 and 0.054, respectively.…
Sub-8-nm resolution AKB-mirror-based hard X-ray ptychography via generalized Wirtinger projections
Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院高能物理研究所）；Spallation Neutron Source Science Center, China Spallation Neutron Source（中国散裂中子源科学中心）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
