Active metasurface designs for lensless and detector-limited imaging
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Abstract The emergence of metasurfaces has enabled lightweight, compact imaging with degrees of freedom which previously required complex optical setups to achieve, such as polarization, wave vector, and spectrum. To date, most metasurface-enabled imaging systems have thus far been 'passive', and therefore subject to fundamental information and thickness limits set by the coupling of light to their sensor arrays. We discuss the use of active metasurfaces in low form-factor and low pixel-count imaging systems and introduce a prototypical lensless imaging system concept which employs an active metasurface as a high-frequency, continuously tunable amplitude and phase modulation aperture, coupled to a discrete single-pixel detector. We analyze the scalability of such a platform and computationally demonstrate that a scalable 'perimeter-control' addressing architecture – in which a M × N rectangular array of scattering elements is addressed by only M + N voltages – is sufficient for image collection, even when scatterers exhibit limited (272°) phase control, and undesired amplitude variations. We also address fundamental limits in information collection, image aberrations, and signal-to-noise ratio, highlighting key advantages, limitations, and trade-offs for active metasurface imaging. We generalize our discussion to other active metasurface-enabled imaging configurations and applications. Finally, we consider promising active metasurface material platforms with an outlook towards new directions to enable high-efficiency imaging.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank Ruzan Sokhoyan and Jared Sisler for preliminary discussions on the project concept, Claudio Hail for preliminary discussions and suggestions regarding detection methods, Morgan Foley for preliminary discussions and early analysis of 2D imaging, Lior Michaeli for advice and discussion, and Zachary Laskin, Oren Mizrahi, and Michael Kelzenberg for discussion on scalable addressing of metasurfaces and memory architectures.
Copyright and License
Open Access. ©2025 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Supplemental Material
Data Availability
The code and data used to generate this work is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Supplementary information accompanies the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the Meta-Imaging MURI grant #FA9550-21-1-0312 from Air Force Office of Scientific Research. JB acknowledges funding through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) PGS D program. PT acknowledges support from Meta Platforms, Inc., through the PhD fellowship #C-834952.
Contributions
PT and HAA conceived the original idea. JB developed and implemented the simulation formalism, suggested the design of arbitrary imaging bases, performed the perimeter-control addressed beam steering and imaging studies, and wrote the manuscript. PT developed initial 1D imaging calculations and comparisons to conventional imaging methods, investigated possible imaging modes of the proposed system, suggested studies, and revised the manuscript. HAA organized the project, reviewed the formalism, suggested studies, and revised the manuscript. All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and consented to its submission to the journal, reviewed all the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest
Authors state no conflict of interest.
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Additional details
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
- PGS D
- Meta Platforms, Inc.
- C-834952
- United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Meta-Imaging MURI Grant FA9550-21-1-0312