Design of an achromatic projection system on a curved surface for enlarging view using polarization control metasurface

Abstract

Image projection systems are widely used in modern applications. To enlarge the field of view (FOV), especially for curved-surface projection, multiple projectors are used to display different images, and the images are spliced with increasing system volume. For a single projector, chromatic aberration caused by the edge of the complex optical system is unavoidable during the enlargement of view angle. We propose and designed a projection system using a metallic nanorod antenna array metasurface with polarization control to enlarge the FOV with a slim structure and realize achromatic multicolor display on curved surfaces. With far-field computational simulations, three output images were stitched into a picture on a hemispherical surface, and the field diffraction angle was found to be three times as large as direct projection, approaching 270 deg theoretically. With the derived formula, the achromatic effect can be realized by optimizing incident angle parameters at different wavelengths, with an angular dispersion of <6.6 × 10 − 5 deg / nm, which is sufficient for multicolor display. The system greatly reduces the complexity of optical design with multicolor display and shows potential for the miniaturization of curved-surface projection with the metasurface.