Review of polarization components for infrared imaging systems: from wire-grid structured surfaces to reconfigurable metasurfaces

摘要

Infrared imaging polarimetry with structured surfaces components allows performance enhancement for observation, supervision, identification devices, generally far-field detection in low visibility conditions (night, fog, smog, haze, smoke, heavy rainfall, underwater conditions), for civil applications, e.g. environmental monitoring or communications, which aims to reduce the risk of traffic accidents, as well as defense and security purposes, where a tactical advantage is needed. Other applications aim at improving the performance of sub-wavelength imaging systems: spatial scanning, optical flaw detection, microscopies, medical tomography or cancer diagnostics systems, generally near-field range investigation. We review many important polarization components from wire-grid structured surfaces to reconfigurable metasurfaces, that can be achieved in order to manage sub-wavelength near-field details and their transfer in far-field by polarimetry techniques without moving parts. Advanced research is needed to show which concept will prevail in the market for the achievement of ultracompact polarization optical components and their integration into a functional model of polarization state analyzer for imaging systems with high efficiency in long wave infrared.