Why optics needs thickness

Abstract

We show why and when optics needs thickness as well as width or area. Wave diffraction explains the fundamental need for area or diameter of a lens or aperture to achieve some resolution or number of pixels in microscopes and cameras. Now we show that, if we know what the optics is to do, even before design, we can also deduce minimum required thickness. This limit comes from diffraction together with a novel concept called "overlapping non-locality" C that can be deduced rigorously just from the mathematical description of what the device is to do. C expresses how much the input regions for different output regions overlap. This limit applies broadly to optics from cameras to metasurfaces, and to wave systems generally.

References in corpus (14)

• All-Optical Machine Learning Using Diffractive Deep Neural Networks
• Photonics for artificial intelligence and neuromorphic computing
• Single-chip photonic deep neural network for instantaneous image classification
• Attojoule Optoelectronics for Low-Energy Information Processing and Communications: a Tutorial Review
• Laguerre-Gaussian mode sorter
• Self-Configuring Universal Linear Optical Component
• Self-aligning universal beam coupler
• Waves, modes, communications and optics
• All linear optical devices are mode converters
• Squeeze free space with nonlocal flat optics
• Fundamental Limit to Linear One-Dimensional Slow Light Structures
• An optic to replace space and its application towards ultra-thin imaging systems
• Scattering concentration bounds: Brightness theorems for waves
• Designing high-performance propagation-compressing spaceplates using thin-film multilayer stacks

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Minireview on Disordered Optical Metasurfaces
• Roadmap on Nonlocality in Photonic Materials and Metamaterials
• High-efficiency high-NA metalens designed by maximizing the efficiency limit
• Programmable metasurfaces for future photonic artificial intelligence
• Broadband transparent Huygens' spaceplates
• Rotated chirped volume Bragg gratings for compact spectral analysis
• Transcending shift-invariance in the paraxial regime via end-to-end inverse design of freeform nanophotonics
• Scalable freeform optimization of wide-aperture 3D metalenses by zoned discrete axisymmetry
• Transmission efficiency limit for nonlocal metalenses
• Arbitrary control over multimode wave propagation for machine learning
• Shrinking a gradient index lens antenna system with a spaceplate
• Gigahertz modulation of a fully dielectric nonlocal metasurface
• Omni-resonant imaging across the visible
• Fast approximate solvers for metamaterials design in electromagnetism
• Phase fields in momentum space of photonic crystal slabs
• Ultracompact Wide-FOV Near-infrared Camera with Wafer-level Manufactured Meta-Aspheric Lens