Inverse design beyond photonic crystals - An introduction to scattering optical elements

摘要

A method of inverse design is applied to generate a new family of optical devices named scattering optical elemetns (SOE). The two dimensional (2D) designs consist of a few layers of 0.4μm × 0.4μm square-shaped bars etched in gallium arsenide. SOEs are defined as a class of computer-generated optical devices whose functionalities are based on the multiple scattering by their individual constituents. For realization of the aforementioned devices, two-dimensional photonic plates could be fabricated by only a single integrated circuit processing procedure followed by micromanipulation assembling. A small library of compact SOE devices are presented: A focusing device, a wavelength de-multiplexer, an optimized optical source, an optical MEMS switch and a cloaking device.