Experimental Demonstration of Luneburg Waveguides

Vera Smolyaninova,Igor Smolyaninov,Todd Adams,David Lahneman,Thomas Gresock,Christopher Jensen,Kathryn Zander

doi:10.3390/photonics2020440

Vera Smolyaninova, Igor Smolyaninov + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics2020440

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Journal: Photonics	Publication Date: Apr 20, 2015
Citations: 25	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Towson University, University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

Transformation optics gives rise to numerous unusual optical devices, such as novel metamaterial lenses and invisibility cloaks. Very recently, Mattheakis et al. (Luneburg lens waveguide networks. J. Opt. 2012, 14, 114006) have suggested theoretical design of an optical waveguide, based on a network of Luneburg lenses, which may be useful in sensing and nonlinear optics applications. Here, we report the first experimental realization of such Luneburg waveguides. We have studied wavelength and polarization dependent performance of the waveguides.

Highlights

Explosive development of elecromagnetic metamaterials and transformation optics (TO) produced such novel and fascinating optical devices as perfect lenses [1], hyperlenses [2,3,4], invisibility cloaks [5,6,7,8], and perfect absorbers [9]
The expected double periodicity of light distribution in the Luneburg waveguide is indicated by arrows in frames (c) and (d)
We have studied propagation of transverse magnetic (TM) light though curved Luneburg waveguides as illustrated in analysis of the cross section (Figure 6d) indicates that the double and the other even periods still dominate light distribution inside the curved waveguide, which confirms its Luneburg nature

Summary

Introduction

Explosive development of elecromagnetic metamaterials and transformation optics (TO) produced such novel and fascinating optical devices as perfect lenses [1], hyperlenses [2,3,4], invisibility cloaks [5,6,7,8], and perfect absorbers [9]. Solutions of Equation (4) are plotted, which shows the resulting effective refractive indices for both polarizations This behavior may be used to fabricate various TO-based lenses if a waveguide thickness as a function of spatial coordinates d(r) may be controlled with enough precision. Theoretical performance of such a lens for f = 1 is presented, based on the COMSOL. Theoretical simulation of a waveguide-based Luneburg lens for TM polarized light using. The lens diameter in the simulation is set to 1

Experimental Section

Conclusions