SPIE Photonics West 2019 Documents
Thank you for taking part in our events during and besides SPIE Photonics West 2019. Below you may find our slides and posters for downloading.
Seminars
VirtualLab Fusion Technology and Applications: Interferometry, Microscopy and Fiber Coupling
Participants discovered the Fast Physical Optics concept with VirtualLab Fusion by means of seminar modules on technology and different applications. After a brief insight into the theory and the different electromagnetic modeling techniques we discussed the application fields of interferometry, microscopy and fiber coupling.
Slides "Introduction and Fiber Coupling" (PDF)
Beyond Ray Tracing: Innovative Optical Design with Fast Physical Optics
A software package that yields fast physical optics simulation results alongside ray tracing then becomes, not a choice, but a necessity. This is precisely what VirtualLab Fusion offers: during our free seminar attendees discovered the Fast Physical Optics concept, how to benefit from it through our user-friendly GUI, and got an overview of what it can achieve in a wide-ranging set of applications!
Talks
Physical-optics simulation of optical interferometry systems
Modern interferometer-based optical-metrology technologies play an important role in many applications, and often consist of multi-disciplinary components. This reveals new ways of improving the performance or enriching the functionality of the system, while at the same time causing certain difficulties in system analysis and assembly. To overcome this, we present a physical-optics-based simulation approach. We demonstrate how to integrate new components (from microscopy objectives to diffractive, micro- and nanostructures) in selected classical interferometric setups, and gauge whether the resulting system fulfills the desired functionality.
How the design concepts of high-NA beam splitters and diffusers, as well as of beam shapers by freeform surfaces are related
Tailored laser illumination systems play a major role in various industrial applications, ranging from laser-beam splitting and diffusing to generate signal patterns with large fields of view for face and movement recognition, to shaping the wavefront of a laser beam using freeform surfaces. Several design concepts are based on topology control of the shaping element to avoid strong phase jumps or to minimize phase vortices and control the speckles of the illumination pattern at the signal plane. Other techniques follow a local shaping approach of the phase to control the wavefront, either over the whole element or in specific regions, with said regions arranged periodically to generate e.g. micro-lens arrays or randomly to generate diffusers of continuous surface topology. In particular, we show how these techniques are related to each other and how they can be used to improve maximum efficiency, uniformity of the intensity distribution and to minimize the zeroth order for non-paraxial illumination by laser beams.
Physical-optics modeling of diffractive/meta-lenses and their design
Diffractive lenses, as well as the meta-lenses which have recently started to draw attention, are of importance in different optical applications. We propose a fast-physical-optics approach for the modeling and design of such components. A diffractive or meta-lens can be modeled as local structures (e.g. local gratings) on a base interface. The rigorous Fourier modal method (FMM) is applied for the local micro-/nanostructures; then the phase modulations at each position can be collected to model the lens function. The design of diffractive/meta-lenses follows an inverse concept – starting with a functional description of the whole lens, and then searching for suitable local structures.
Poster presentations
Design of Single-Mode Fiber-Coupling Lenses and Tolerance Analysis
Single-mode fibers, due to their guidance of the single-mode, are helpful in e.g. optical communications, high-beam-quality fiber lasers, etc. For such applications, it is always relevant to investigate how to launch light into, and collect light from, the fiber efficiently. In contrast to the traditional parametric-based lens design, we present an approach, using the knowledge of the mode field of a single-mode fiber and following the inverse design concept from physical optics. The performance of the coupling system, especially its tolerance with respect to misalignment, can be analyzed and evaluated.
Design and optimization strategy of incoupling gratings for near-eye displays
Waveguide-based near-eye display devices are drawing much interest recently, and one of the key technologies of such devices is the incoupling grating for the planar waveguide. Based on an analysis in the spatial-frequency domain, we put forward a design strategy which helps to determine the supported field-of-view, and to find a reasonable value of the grating period and orientation. Subsequent optimization, using the rigorous Fourier modal method for the grating efficiency calculation, can be employed to find the suitable grating profiles that deliver uniform diffraction efficiencies over the desired angular range.