Conical quadreflex antenna analytical study

A method for evaluating the performance of a four-reflection or quadreflex antenna is reported. Geometrical optics was used initially to determine the ideal feed pattern required to produce uniform illumination on the aperture of the conical reflector and the reverse problem of quickly finding the aperture illumination given an arbitrary feed pattern. The knowledge of the aperture illumination makes it possible to compute the antenna efficiency, which is useful for comparing antenna performance during tradeoff studies. Scattering calculations, using physical optics techniques, were then used to more accurately determine the performance of a specific design

Design Considerations for Large Detector Arrays on Submillimeter-wave Telescopes

The emerging technology of large (~ 10,000 pixel) submillimeter-wave bolometer arrays presents a novel optical design problem---how can such arrays be fed by diffraction-limited telescope optics where the primary mirror is less than 100,000 wavelengths in diameter? Standard Cassegrain designs for radiotelescope optics exhibit focal surface curvature so large that detectors cannot be placed more than 25 beam diameters from the central ray. The problem is worse for Ritchey-Cretien designs, because these minimize coma while increasing field curvature. Classical aberrations, including coma, are usually dominated by diffraction in submillimeter-wave single dish telescopes. The telescope designer must consider (1) diffraction, (2) aberration, (3) curvature of field, (4) cross-polarization, (5) internal reflections, (6) the effect of blockages, (7) means of beam chopping on- and off-source, (8) gravitational and thermal deformations of the primary mirror, (9) the physical mounting of large detector packages, and (10) the effect of gravity and (11) vibration on those detectors. Simultaneous optimization of these considerations in the case of large detector arrays leads to telescopes that differ considerably from standard radiotelescope designs. Offset optics provide flexibility for mounting detectors, while eliminating blockage and internal reflections. Aberrations and cross-polarization can be the same as on-axis designs having the same diameter and focal length. Trade-offs include the complication of primary mirror homology and an increase in overall cost. A dramatic increase in usable field of view can be achieved using shaped optics. Solutions having one to six mirrors will be discussed, including a possible six-mirror design for the proposed South Pole 10m telescope.Comment: in proceedings "Radio Telescopes" SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 30 March 2000, Munich. SPIE code 4015-46. 12 pages 4 figures Revised to fix typos, figur

The design and evaluation of grazing incidence relay optics

X-ray astronomy, both solar and celestial, has many needs for high spatial resolution observations which have to be performed with electronic detectors. If the resolution is not to be detector limited, plate scales in excess of 25 microns arc/sec, corresponding to focal lengths greater than 5 m, are required. In situations where the physical size is restricted, the problem can be solved by the use of grazing incidence relay optics. A system was developed which employs externally polished hyperboloid-hyperboloid surfaces to be used in conjunction with a Wolter-Schwarzschild primary. The secondary is located in front of the primary focus and provides a magnification of 4, while the system has a plate scale of 28 microns arc/sec and a length of 1.9 m. The design, tolerance specification, fabrication and performance at visible and X-ray wavelengths of this optical system are described

Optical Nanotransmission Lines: Synthesis of Planar Left-Handed Metamaterials in the Infrared and Visible Regimes

Following our recent theoretical development of the concept of nano-inductors, nano-capacitors and nano-resistors at optical frequencies and the possibility of synthesizing more complex nano-scale circuits, here we theoretically investigate in detail the problem of optical nano-transmission-lines (NTL) that can be envisioned by properly joining together arrays of these basic nano-scale circuit elements. We show how, in the limit in which these basic circuit elements are closely packed together, the NTLs can be regarded as stacks of plasmonic and non-plasmonic planar slabs, which may be designed to effectively exhibit the properties of planar metamaterials with forward (right-handed) or backward (left-handed) operation. With the proper design, negative refraction and left-handed propagation are shown to be possible in these planar plasmonic guided-wave structures, providing possibilities for sub-wavelength focusing and imaging in planar optics, and laterally-confined waveguiding at IR and visible frequencies. The effective material parameters for such NTLs are derived, and the connection and analogy between these optical NTLs and the double-negative and double-positive metamaterials are also explored. Physical insights and justification for the results are also presented.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in JOSA B, scheduled to appear March 200

Robust topology optimization of three-dimensional photonic-crystal band-gap structures

We perform full 3D topology optimization (in which "every voxel" of the unit cell is a degree of freedom) of photonic-crystal structures in order to find optimal omnidirectional band gaps for various symmetry groups, including fcc (including diamond), bcc, and simple-cubic lattices. Even without imposing the constraints of any fabrication process, the resulting optimal gaps are only slightly larger than previous hand designs, suggesting that current photonic crystals are nearly optimal in this respect. However, optimization can discover new structures, e.g. a new fcc structure with the same symmetry but slightly larger gap than the well known inverse opal, which may offer new degrees of freedom to future fabrication technologies. Furthermore, our band-gap optimization is an illustration of a computational approach to 3D dispersion engineering which is applicable to many other problems in optics, based on a novel semidefinite-program formulation for nonconvex eigenvalue optimization combined with other techniques such as a simple approach to impose symmetry constraints. We also demonstrate a technique for \emph{robust} topology optimization, in which some uncertainty is included in each voxel and we optimize the worst-case gap, and we show that the resulting band gaps have increased robustness to systematic fabrication errors.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Optics Expres

Cloaking and anamorphism for light and mass diffusion

We first review classical results on cloaking and mirage effects for electromagnetic waves. We then show that transformation optics allows the masking of objects or produces mirages in diffusive regimes. In order to achieve this, we consider the equation for diffusive photon density in transformed coordinates, which is valid for diffusive light in scattering media. More precisely, generalizing transformations for star domains introduced in [Diatta and Guenneau, J. Opt. 13, 024012, 2011] for matter waves, we numerically demonstrate that infinite conducting objects of different shapes scatter diffusive light in exactly the same way. We also propose a design of external light-diffusion cloak with spatially varying sign-shifting parameters that hides a finite size scatterer outside the cloak. We next analyse non-physical parameter in the transformed Fick's equation derived in [Guenneau and Puvirajesinghe, R. Soc. Interface 10, 20130106, 2013], and propose to use a non-linear transform that overcomes this problem. We finally investigate other form invariant transformed diffusion-like equations in the time domain, and touch upon conformal mappings and non-Euclidean cloaking applied to diffusion processes.Comment: 42 pages, Latex, 14 figures. V2: Major changes : some formulas corrected, some extra cases added, overall length extended from 21 pages (V1) to 42 pages (present version V2). The last version will appear at Journal of Optic

Topology optimization of freeform large-area metasurfaces

We demonstrate optimization of optical metasurfaces over $10^5$--$10^6$ degrees of freedom in two and three dimensions, 100--1000+ wavelengths ($\lambda$) in diameter, with 100+ parameters per $\lambda^2$. In particular, we show how topology optimization, with one degree of freedom per high-resolution "pixel," can be extended to large areas with the help of a locally periodic approximation that was previously only used for a few parameters per $\lambda^2$. In this way, we can computationally discover completely unexpected metasurface designs for challenging multi-frequency, multi-angle problems, including designs for fully coupled multi-layer structures with arbitrary per-layer patterns. Unlike typical metasurface designs based on subwavelength unit cells, our approach can discover both sub- and supra-wavelength patterns and can obtain both the near and far fields