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© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

The control of a lens’s numerical aperture has potential applications in areas such as photography and imaging, displays, sensing, laser processing and even laser-implosion fusion. In such fields, the ability to control lens properties dynamically is of much interest, and active meta-lenses of various kinds are under investigation due to their modulation speed and compactness. However, as of yet, meta-lenses that explicitly offer dynamic control of a lens’s numerical aperture have received little attention. Here, we design and simulate active meta-lenses (specifically, focusing meta-mirrors) using chalcogenide phase-change materials to provide such control. We show that, operating at a wavelength of 3000 nm, our devices can change the numerical aperture by up to a factor of 1.85 and operate at optical intensities of the order of 1.2 × 109 Wm−2. Furthermore, we show the scalability of our design towards shorter wavelengths (visible spectrum), where we demonstrate a change in NA by a factor of 1.92.

Details

Title
Optical and Thermal Design and Analysis of Phase-Change Metalenses for Active Numerical Aperture Control
Author
Braid, George 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Carlota Ruiz de Galarreta 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Comley, Andrew 2 ; Bertolotti, Jacopo 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Wright, C David 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 College of Engineering Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QF, UK 
 AWE Aldermaston, Reading RG7 4PR, UK 
First page
2689
Publication year
2022
Publication date
2022
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20794991
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2700708200
Copyright
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.