Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Most advances in metaoptics have been made at visible wavelengths and above; in contrast, the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) has barely been explored despite numerous scientific and technological opportunities. Creating metaoptic elements at this short wavelength is challenging due to the scarcity of VUV transparent materials and the small sizes of the required nanostructures. Here, we present the first transmissive VUV (175 nm) metalens. By using UV-grade silica and trading-off the Nyquist requirement for subwavelength structures against feasibility of the fabrication process, we achieve a step-change in diffraction efficiencies for wavelengths shorter than 300 nm. Our large numerical aperture (NA = 0.5) metalens shows an average diffraction efficiency of (53.3 +- 1.4)%. This demonstration opens up new avenues for compact flat optic systems operating in the VUV range.
Language: English
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Harvard University, Office of Science, Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems, High Energy Physics, Laboratory Directed Research and Development, FAS Division of Science, Harvard University, Fermilab, H2020 European Research Council
Awards: G154696372, NNCI: Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), G2347808973, A background-free experiment to discover the nature of neutrinos based on single Barium Atom Light Detection, G4404904460, G4671203234, G498139845, G5590656846, G5616713406, G585908603, G5937122382, G716412294, G86560745, G969889393
OpenAlex ID: W4391157643