Utah researchers demonstrated the functions in their flat lens with take a look at photographs of the solar and moon. Credit score: Menon Lab, College of Utah
For hundreds of years, lenses have labored the similar method: curved glass or plastic bending mild to deliver photographs into concentration. However conventional lenses have a big downside—the extra tough they want to be, the bulkier and heavier they transform.
Scientists have lengthy looked for a approach to scale back the load of lenses with out sacrificing capability. And whilst some slimmer possible choices exist, they have a tendency to be restricted of their capability and are usually difficult and costly to make.
New analysis from College of Utah engineering professor Rajesh Menon and associates on the Value School of Engineering gives a promising answer acceptable to telescopes and astrophotography: a big aperture flat lens that focuses mild as successfully as conventional curved lenses whilst protecting correct colour.
The learn about, “Colour astrophotography with a 100 mm-diameter f/2 polymer flat lens,” seems in Carried out Physics Letters.
This era may just develop into astrophotography imaging methods, particularly in programs the place area is at a top rate, akin to on plane, satellites and space-based telescopes.
Their learn about used to be led by means of Menon Lab member Apratim Majumder, a analysis assistant professor within the Division of Electric & Laptop Engineering. Co-authors come with fellow Menon Lab contributors Alexander Ingold and Monjurul Meem, the Division of Physics & Astronomy’s Tanner Obray and Paul Ricketts, and Nicole Brimhall of Oblate Optics.
Lenses bend mild to make gadgets seem larger. The thicker and heavier the lens, the extra it bends the sunshine, and the more potent the magnification. For on a regular basis cameras and yard telescopes, lens thickness is not an enormous downside.
But if telescopes should concentration mild from galaxies hundreds of thousands of light-years away, the majority in their lenses transform impractical. That is why observatory and space-based telescopes depend on huge, curved mirrors as a substitute to reach the similar light-bending impact, since they may be able to be made a lot thinner and lighter than lenses.
Scientists have additionally attempted to resolve the bulkiness downside by means of designing flat lenses, which manipulate mild otherwise.
One current sort, known as a Fresnel zone plate (FZP), makes use of concentric ridges to concentration mild, moderately than a thick, curved floor. Whilst this system does create a light-weight and compact lens, it comes with a tradeoff: it cannot produce true colours. Reasonably than bending the entire wavelengths of visual mild on the similar attitude, the ridges of an FZP diffract them at other angles, leading to a picture with chromatic aberrations, or colour distortions.
Input Rajesh Menon and his crew on the U. Their new flat lens gives the similar light-bending energy as conventional curved lenses whilst averting the colour distortions of FZPs.
The concentric rings of microscopic indentations at the researchers’ flat lens are optimized to deliver all wavelengths of sunshine into concentration on the similar time. Credit score: Menon Lab, College of Utah
“Our computational ways urged lets design multi-level diffractive flat lenses with huge apertures that would concentration mild around the visual spectrum and we have now the assets within the Utah Nanofab to if truth be told cause them to,” mentioned Menon, who directs the U’s Laboratory for Optical Nanotechnologies.
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The important thing innovation lies within the microscopically small concentric rings that the researchers can development at the substrate. Not like the ridges of FZPs, which can be optimized for a unmarried wavelength, the dimensions and spacing of the flat lens’ indentations stay the diffracted wavelengths of sunshine shut sufficient in combination to supply a full-color, in-focus symbol.
“Simulating the efficiency of those lenses over an excessively huge bandwidth, from visual to near-infrared, concerned fixing complicated computational issues involving very huge datasets,” Majumder mentioned.
“When we optimized the design of the lens’ microstructures, the producing procedure concerned required very stringent procedure regulate and environmental balance.”
A big, flat, color-accurate lens may have huge implications throughout industries, however its maximum fast utility is in astronomy. The researchers demonstrated the functions in their flat lens with take a look at photographs of the solar and moon.
“Our demonstration is a stepping stone against growing very huge aperture light-weight flat lenses with the aptitude of taking pictures full-color photographs to be used in air-and-space-based telescopes,” Majumder mentioned.
Additional information:
Apratim Majumder et al, Colour astrophotography with a 100 mm-diameter f/2 polymer flat lens, Carried out Physics Letters (2025). DOI: 10.1063/5.0242208
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Engineers create first flat telescope lens that may seize colour whilst detecting mild from far off stars (2025, February 27)
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