Nanoscale gradient index media fabrication for extreme control and tunability of optical wave propagation

Author

Devlin, Christie L. H. ; Vella, Jarrett H. ; Walker, Dennis E. ; Lombardi, Jack P. ; Limberopoulos, Nicholaos I. ; Derov, John S.

Author_Institution

Sensors Directorate, United States Air Force Res. Lab., Wright-Patterson AFB, OH, USA

fYear

2014

Firstpage

46

Lastpage

49

Abstract

Gradient Index Media have multiple applications for controlling the wave propagation and harvesting its received energy or processing its embedded data. A nanofabrication process was developed to produce a Luneburg lens on silicon, to operate in the optical regime, with feature sizes smaller than 100nm. The focused energy of the Luneburg lens is compared with lenses of non-spatially-varying index as well as a linear spatial variation, and its enhanced focusing is clearly demonstrated. In addition, a mechanism of thermal tunability of such devices is proposed and is supported by our results.

Keywords

gradient index optics; lenses; light propagation; nanofabrication; nanophotonics; optical fabrication; optical tuning; Luneburg lens; energy harvesting; extreme control; focusing; linear spatial variation; nanofabrication; nanoscale gradient index media fabrication; optical wave propagation; thermal tunability; Focusing; Gratings; Indexes; Lenses; Optical device fabrication; Silicon; Luneburg lens; control; gradient index; nanofabrication; optical wave; thermal; tunability;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace and Electronics Conference, NAECON 2014 - IEEE National

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-4690-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NAECON.2014.7045774

Filename

7045774