A Fully Metaoptical Zoom Lens with a Wide Range

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Nanotechnology
• Materials Science

Background:

• Traditional metalenses have fixed focal lengths, limiting their use in dynamic applications.
• Existing metalens zoom methods offer limited ranges or require supplementary optics for imaging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate a zoom metalens capable of both imaging and variable focusing through axial movement.
• To overcome the limitations of fixed focal length and narrow zoom ranges in current metalens technology.

Main Methods:

• Design of a metalens utilizing a polynomial phase profile to emulate an aspheric lens.
• Implementation of axial movement for focal length adjustment and zoom functionality.
• Characterization of imaging performance and zoom range through experimental validation.

Main Results:

• Achieved a significant zoom range of 11.9x.
• Maintained good imaging quality across the zoom range.
• Demonstrated an extended depth of focus due to the polynomial phase profile.

Conclusions:

• The developed zoom metalens offers a large, continuous zoom capability with high imaging fidelity.
• This technology is suitable for miniaturized, weight-sensitive applications like drone and microrobot surveillance cameras.
• The axial movement-based zoom metalens enables more versatile and flexible optical system designs.