Shaping of Optical Wavefronts Using Light‐Patterned Photothermal Metamaterial

Having full control of light propagation in free space represents the ultimate goal for an imaging system. Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs), featuring the ability to actively control the spatial distribution of light components, are usually limited either to performing small and continuous adjustment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advanced optical materials 2022-11, Vol.10 (21), p.n/a
Main Authors: Robert, Hadrien M. L., Čičala, Martin, Piliarik, Marek
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adaptive optics
Diffraction
heat propagation
Imaging
Luminous intensity
Materials science
Mathematical analysis
Metamaterials
Optics
Phase modulation
Response time
Spatial distribution
Spatial light modulators
Temperature profiles
thermoplasmonics
Wave fronts
Zernike polynomials
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Summary:Having full control of light propagation in free space represents the ultimate goal for an imaging system. Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs), featuring the ability to actively control the spatial distribution of light components, are usually limited either to performing small and continuous adjustments to imaging aberrations or to rapidly shifting discrete segments of the wavefront with severe diffraction artifacts. Here a photothermally modulated optical structure is introduced as a highly responsive SLM capable of producing arbitrarily shaped wavefront patterns with smooth as well as step‐like features. The phase‐shift inducing temperature profile within the plasmonic metamaterial at the core of the SLM structure replicates closely the pattern of illuminating light intensity avoiding the common speed and spatial gradient limitations. As a result, the SLM concept is insensitive to polarization, free of diffraction artifacts, and offers sub‐millisecond response time and high transmittance >80%. The dynamic generation of a set of common optical functions is demonstrated, including low‐order Zernike polynomials patterns, phase grating, or vortex, which build an essential phase modulation toolbox across different imaging applications. The authors introduce a versatile tunable optical element capable of forming smooth wavefronts of arbitrary shapes as well as rapid spatial phase jumps without any segmentation artefacts. They demonstrate the fast and directly programmable generation of ultimately smooth wavefront corrections for low‐order aberrations, pixel‐like patterns, as well as phase singularities, using a single, optically driven, and highly transmissive device.
ISSN:2195-1071
2195-1071
DOI:10.1002/adom.202200960