Harmonic achromatic metalens with a wide field of view for AR/VR applications

Abstract Metalens is a cutting-edge optical marvel, revolutionizes a plethora of applications like cameras, telescope, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Despite having ultrathin structure, lightweight nature, and multifunctionality, achievement of both achromatic imaging and wide field of view (WFOV) remains a persistent challenge. To address these concerns, here we present a novel approach using a harmonic metalens featuring a quadratic phase profile to achieve achromatic behavior and WFOV simultaneously. This innovation enables WFOV imaging using the Fourier transform of quadratic phase profile and achromatic behavior at RGB wavelengths (blue λ = 488 nm, green λ = 532 nm and red λ = 633 nm) with a WFOV of up to <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>45</mml:mn> <mml:mo>∘</mml:mo> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The designed harmonic metalens is polarization-insensitive, with a numerical aperture of 0.79, and it achieves a maximum focusing efficiency of ∼50% at a wavelength of 633 nm under normal incidence. Being polarization insensitive and achromatic, proposed scheme will certainly broaden the utilization of metalenses in AR/VR, displays and applications in imaging. © 2024 Optical Society of America.