Xi’an Institute of Optics and Mechanics has made progress in the research of optical super lens.

Recently, the micro-nano photonic integration research group of the State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonic Technology, Xi’an Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, used a single-layer hyperlens (metalens) to achieve the separation and focus of left and right circularly polarized light in three-dimensional space. It breaks the symmetry of the previous spin-dependent beam focusing and surpasses the light field focusing ability of the traditional geometric optical lens, which is of great significance to the research of optical imaging.

Traditional geometric optical lenses only adjust the phase of incident light to achieve focusing through the change of glass thickness, and cannot control the vector light field (such as polarization, spin, etc.). A super lens is a two-dimensional planar lens structure, which is small in size, light in weight, easy to integrate, and can realize flexible control of the incident light amplitude, phase, polarization and other parameters. It is used in super-resolution microscopy, holographic optics, and achromatic There are important applications such as lenses. This research uses the method of combining the dynamic phase of the nano-antenna that constitutes the hyper-lens with the Pancharatnam-Berry geometric phase, and by cleverly designing the geometric structure and spatial orientation of the nano-antenna on the hyper-lens, the left and right-handed circles are simultaneously realized on the single-layer hyper-lens. The independent control of the phase of the polarized light completes the focusing of the beams of different spin states in the lateral and radial directions, which improves the beam control and focusing ability of the super lens. It has the advantages of compact structure and strong flexibility, which can meet the small size of optical systems and devices. The requirements of diversified chemical functions.

This research was strongly funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Strategic Leading Science and Technology Special (Class B) "Large-scale Photonic Integrated Chip" and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Related results were published on "Advanced Optical Materials" (Advanced Optical Materials).