Polarimetric Compressed Sensing with Hollow, Self-Assembled Diffractive Films

Area of Science:

• Nanophotonics
• Optical Engineering
• Computational Imaging

Background:

• Polarization and wavefront sensing offer insights for surface assessment, material identification, and imaging in challenging environments.
• Conventional polarization cameras suffer from reduced resolution due to multiple sensor measurements and filtering optics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a nanophotonic pipeline for compressive sensing of light polarization and wavefront information.
• To reduce sampling requirements in polarization imaging through novel optical encoders.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a low-refractive-index, self-assembled optical encoder composed of nanostructures.
• Engineered nanostructures to scatter light into lattice modes encoding wavefront direction and polarization ellipticity.
• Integrated optical encoders with a neural network for predicting polarization and pointing information.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated that random optical encoders achieve higher resolution by blurring interference patterns.
• Showcased the modulation and spatial multiplexing of light polarization by self-assembled hollow nanocavity arrays.
• Achieved prediction of wavefront direction and polarization ellipticity from diffracted interference patterns.

Conclusions:

• The proposed nanophotonic pipeline enables compressive sensing for polarization and wavefront analysis.
• Self-assembled hollow nanocavity arrays offer a distinct material class for optical encoding, distinct from metasurfaces.
• This technology has potential applications in optical computing, compressed sensing, and advanced imaging systems.