Design of achromatic augmented reality visors based on composite metasurfaces.

A compact near-eye visor (NEV) system that can guide light from a display to the eye could transform augmented reality (AR) technology. Unfortunately, existing implementations of such an NEV either suffer from small field of view or chromatic aberrations. See-through quality and bulkiness further make the overall performance of the visors unsuitable for a seamless user experience. Metasurfaces are an emerging class of nanophotonic elements that can dramatically reduce the size of optical elements while enhancing functionality. In this paper, we present a design of composite metasurfaces for an ultra-compact NEV. We simulate the performance of a proof-of-principle visor corrected for chromatic aberrations while providing a large display field of view (>77° both horizontally and vertically), good see-through quality (>70% transmission and less than a wavelength root mean-square (RMS) wavefront error over the whole visible wavelength range), as needed for an immersive AR experience.

[1]  J. Fontaine,et al.  Design of a large field-of-view see-through near to eye display with two geometrical waveguides. , 2016, Optics letters.

[2]  Federico Capasso,et al.  Single-Layer Metasurface with Controllable Multiwavelength Functions. , 2018, Nano letters.

[3]  David A. Atchison,et al.  Optics of the Human Eye , 2023 .

[4]  von F. Zernike.  Beugungstheorie des schneidenver-fahrens und seiner verbesserten form, der phasenkontrastmethode , 1934 .

[5]  Metasurface Freeform Nanophotonics , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[6]  Zhaocheng Liu,et al.  Metasurfaces for near-eye augmented reality , 2019, ACS Photonics.

[7]  C. Sheppard,et al.  Approximate calculation of the reflection coefficient from a stratified medium , 1995 .

[8]  Hong Hua,et al.  High-resolution optical see-through multi-focal-plane head-mounted display using freeform optics. , 2014, Optics express.

[9]  Kishore V. Chellappan,et al.  Laser-based displays: a review. , 2010, Applied optics.

[10]  Federico Capasso,et al.  All-glass, large metalens at visible wavelength using deep-ultraviolet projection lithography. , 2019, Nano letters (Print).

[11]  W. T. Chen,et al.  Flat optics with dispersion-engineered metasurfaces , 2020, Nature Reviews Materials.

[12]  Milan Momcilo Popovich,et al.  DigiLens switchable Bragg grating waveguide optics for augmented reality applications , 2018, Photonics Europe.

[13]  Chung-Yu Wu,et al.  Demonstration of a broad band spectral head-mounted display with freeform mirrors. , 2014, Optics express.

[14]  Gordon Wetzstein,et al.  Optimizing virtual reality for all users through gaze-contingent and adaptive focus displays , 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[15]  Katsuyuki Akutsu,et al.  A plastic holographic waveguide combiner for light‐weight and highly‐transparent augmented reality glasses , 2018 .

[16]  Bernard C. Kress,et al.  Optical waveguide combiners for AR headsets: features and limitations , 2019, Other Conferences.

[17]  Andrei Faraon,et al.  Metasurface-based compact light engine for AR headsets , 2019, Optical Design Challenge.

[18]  Byoungho Lee,et al.  Metasurface eyepiece for augmented reality , 2018, Nature Communications.

[19]  P Chavel,et al.  Design and fabrication of binary slanted surface-relief gratings for a planar optical interconnection. , 1997, Applied optics.

[20]  Ronald Azuma,et al.  Recent Advances in Augmented Reality , 2001, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[21]  Byoungho Lee,et al.  Augmented reality near-eye display using Pancharatnam-Berry phase lenses , 2019, Scientific Reports.

[22]  Andrei Faraon,et al.  MEMS-tunable dielectric metasurface lens , 2017, Nature Communications.

[23]  Zhanhua Huang,et al.  A full-color near-eye augmented reality display using a tilted waveguide and diffraction gratings , 2019, Optics Communications.

[24]  Jae-Hyeung Park,et al.  Optical see-through Maxwellian near-to-eye display with an enlarged eyebox. , 2018, Optics letters.

[25]  W Stork,et al.  Artificial distributed-index media fabricated by zero-order gratings. , 1991, Optics letters.

[26]  Seyedeh Mahsa Kamali,et al.  Multiwavelength metasurfaces through spatial multiplexing , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[27]  Arka Majumdar,et al.  Flat metaform near-eye visor. , 2017, Applied optics.

[28]  N. Yu,et al.  Flat optics with designer metasurfaces. , 2014, Nature materials.

[29]  Yi-Hsin Lin,et al.  Varifocal augmented reality adopting electrically tunable uniaxial plane-parallel plates. , 2020, Optics express.

[30]  Arka Majumdar,et al.  Metasurface optics for full-color computational imaging , 2018, Science Advances.

[31]  Shanhui Fan,et al.  S4 : A free electromagnetic solver for layered periodic structures , 2012, Comput. Phys. Commun..