Gradient index optics

Gradient-index optics is the branch of optics

Optics

Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behavior of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light...

 covering optical effects produced by a gradual variation of the refractive index

Refractive index

In optics the refractive index or index of refraction of a substance or medium is a measure of the speed of light in that medium. It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light in vacuum relative to that in the considered medium....

 of a material. Such variations can be used to produce lens

Lens (optics)

A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light, converging or diverging the beam. A simple lens consists of a single optical element...

es with flat surfaces, or lenses that do not have the aberrations typical of traditional spherical lenses. Gradient-index lenses may have a refraction gradient that is spherical, axial, or radial.

In nature

The lens

Lens (anatomy)

The crystalline lens is a transparent, biconvex structure in the eye that, along with the cornea, helps to refract light to be focused on the retina. The lens, by changing shape, functions to change the focal distance of the eye so that it can focus on objects at various distances, thus allowing a...

 of the eye

Eye

Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptors in conscious vision connect light to movement...

 is the most obvious example of gradient-index optics in nature. In the human eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

, the refractive index

Refractive index

In optics the refractive index or index of refraction of a substance or medium is a measure of the speed of light in that medium. It is expressed as a ratio of the speed of light in vacuum relative to that in the considered medium....

 of the lens varies from approximately 1.406 in the central layers down to 1.386 in less dense layers of the lens. (Hecht 1987, p.178) This allows the eye to image with good resolution and low aberration at both short and long distances (Shirk et al, 2006).

Another example of gradient index optics in nature is the common mirage

Mirage

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning "to look at, to wonder at"...

 of a pool of water appearing on a road on a hot day. The pool is actually an image of the sky, apparently located on the road since light rays are being refracted (bent) from their normal straight path. This is due to the variation of refractive index between the hot, less dense air at the surface of the road, and the denser cool air above it. The variation in temperature (and thus density) of the air causes a gradient in its refractive index, causing it to increase with height. This index gradient causes refraction of light rays (at a shallow angle to the road) from the sky, bending them into eye of the viewer, with their apparent location being the road's surface.

Applications

The ability of GRIN lenses to have flat surfaces simplifies the mounting of the lens, which makes them useful where many very small lenses need to be mounted together, such as in photocopier

Photocopier

A photocopier is a machine that makes paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. Most current photocopiers use a technology called xerography, a dry process using heat...

s and scanner

Image scanner

In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...

s. The flat surface also allows a GRIN lens to be easily fused to an optical fiber

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

, to produce collimated

Collimated light

Collimated light is light whose rays are parallel, and therefore will spread slowly as it propagates. The word is related to "collinear" and implies light that does not disperse with distance , or that will disperse minimally...

 output.

In imaging applications, GRIN lenses are mainly used to reduce aberrations. The design of such lenses involves detailed calculations of aberrations as well as efficient manufacture of the lenses. A number of different materials have been used for GRIN lenses including optical glasses, plastics, germanium

Germanium

Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is a lustrous, hard, grayish-white metalloid in the carbon group, chemically similar to its group neighbors tin and silicon. The isolated element is a semiconductor, with an appearance most similar to elemental silicon....

, zinc selenide

Zinc selenide

Zinc selenide , is a light yellow binary solid compound. It is an intrinsic semiconductor with a band gap of about 2.70 eV at 25 °C. ZnSe rarely occurs in nature...

, and sodium chloride

Sodium chloride

Sodium chloride, also known as salt, common salt, table salt or halite, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaCl. Sodium chloride is the salt most responsible for the salinity of the ocean and of the extracellular fluid of many multicellular organisms...

.

Certain optical fibres (graded-index fibres

Graded-index fiber

In fiber optics, a graded-index or gradient-index fiber is an optical fiber whose core has a refractive index that decreases with increasing radial distance from the fiber axis ....

) are made with a radially-varying refractive index profile; this design strongly reduces the modal dispersion

Dispersion (optics)

In optics, dispersion is the phenomenon in which the phase velocity of a wave depends on its frequency, or alternatively when the group velocity depends on the frequency.Media having such a property are termed dispersive media...

 of a multi-mode optical fiber

Multi-mode optical fiber

Multi-mode optical fiber is a type of optical fiber mostly used for communication over short distances, such as within a building or on a campus...

. The radial variation in refractive index allows for a sinusoidal height distribution of rays

Ray (optics)

In optics, a ray is an idealized narrow beam of light. Rays are used to model the propagation of light through an optical system, by dividing the real light field up into discrete rays that can be computationally propagated through the system by the techniques of ray tracing. This allows even very...

 within the fibre, preventing the rays from leaving the core

Core (optical fiber)

The core of a conventional optical fiber is a cylinder of glass or plastic that runs along the fiber's length. The core is surrounded by a medium with a lower index of refraction, typically a cladding of a different glass, or plastic...

. This differs from traditional optical fibres, which rely on total internal reflection

Total internal reflection

Total internal reflection is an optical phenomenon that happens when a ray of light strikes a medium boundary at an angle larger than a particular critical angle with respect to the normal to the surface. If the refractive index is lower on the other side of the boundary and the incident angle is...

, in that all modes of the GRIN fibres propagate at the same speed, allowing for a higher temporal bandwidth for the fibre (Moore, 1980).

Manufacture

GRIN lenses are made by several techniques:

• Neutron
  Neutron
  The neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
  
   irradiation (Sinai, 1971) – Boron
  Boron
  Boron is the chemical element with atomic number 5 and the chemical symbol B. Boron is a metalloid. Because boron is not produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, it is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust. However, boron is concentrated on Earth by the...
  
  -rich glass is bombarded with neutrons in order to cause a change in the boron concentration, and thus the refractive index of the lens.
• Chemical vapour deposition (Keck et al., 1975) – Involving the deposition of different glass with varying refractive indexes, onto a surface to produce a cumulative refractive change.
• Partial polymerisation (Moore, 1973) – An organic monomer
  Monomer
  A monomer is an atom or a small molecule that may bind chemically to other monomers to form a polymer; the term "monomeric protein" may also be used to describe one of the proteins making up a multiprotein complex...
  
   is partially polymerized using ultraviolet light at varying intensities in order to give a refractive gradient.
• Ion exchange
  Ion exchange
  Ion exchange is an exchange of ions between two electrolytes or between an electrolyte solution and a complex. In most cases the term is used to denote the processes of purification, separation, and decontamination of aqueous and other ion-containing solutions with solid polymeric or mineralic 'ion...
  
   (Hensler, 1975) – Glass is immersed into a liquid melt with lithium
  Lithium
  Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. It is represented by the symbol Li, and it has the atomic number 3. Under standard conditions it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly...
  
   ions. As a result of diffusion
  Diffusion
  Molecular diffusion, often called simply diffusion, is the thermal motion of all particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size of the particles...
  
  , sodium
  Sodium
  Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal and is a member of the alkali metals; its only stable isotope is 23Na. It is an abundant element that exists in numerous minerals, most commonly as sodium chloride...
  
   ions in the glass are partially exchanged with lithium ones, with a larger amount of exchange occurring at the edge. Thus the sample obtains a gradient material structure and a corresponding gradient of the refractive index.
• Ion Stuffing (Mohr, 1979) – Phase
  Phase (matter)
  In the physical sciences, a phase is a region of space , throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform. Examples of physical properties include density, index of refraction, and chemical composition...
  
   separation of a specific glass causes pores to form, which can later be filled using a variety of salts or concentration of salts to give a varying gradient.

History

In 1854, J C Maxwell suggested a lens whose refractive index distribution would allow for every region of space to be sharply imaged. Known as the Maxwell Fisheye Lens, it involves a spherical index function and would be expected to be spherical in shape as well (Maxwell, 1854). This lens, however, is impractical to make and has little usefulness since, only points on the surface and within the lens are sharply imaged and extended objects suffer from extreme aberrations. In 1905, R W Wood used a dipping technique creating a gelatin cylinder with a refractive index gradient that varied symmetrically with the radial distance from the axis. Disk shaped slices of the cylinder were later shown to have plane faces with radial index distribution. He showed that even though the faces of the lens were flat, they acted like converging and diverging lens depending on whether the index was a decreasing or increasing relative to the radial distance (Wood, 1905). In 1964, was published a posthumous book of R. K. Luneburg where he discovered a lens that converge all rays of light onto a point which is located on the opposite surface of the lens (Luneburg, 1964). This also limits the applications of the lens, in that it is difficult to be used to focus visual light, however, it was thought to have had some usefulness in microwave applications.

Theory

An inhomogeneous gradient-index lens possesses a refractive index whose change follows the function
of the coordinates of the region of interest in the medium. According to Fermat's principle

Fermat's principle

In optics, Fermat's principle or the principle of least time is the principle that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. This principle is sometimes taken as the definition of a ray of light...

, the light path integral (L), taken along a ray of light

Ray of Light

Ray of Light is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Madonna, released on March 3, 1998 by Maverick Records and distributed by Warner Bros. Records. After giving birth to her daughter Lourdes, Madonna collaborated with Patrick Leonard and William Orbit in developing the album...

 joining any two points of a medium, is stationary

Stationary process

In the mathematical sciences, a stationary process is a stochastic process whose joint probability distribution does not change when shifted in time or space...

 relative to its value for any nearby curve joining the two points. The light path integral is given by the equation

$L=\backslash int\_\{S\_o\}^\{S\}n\backslash ,ds$ ,

where n is the refractive index and S is the arc length of the curve. If Cartesian coordinates are used, this equation is modified to incorporate the change in arc length for a spherical gradient, to each physical dimension:

$L=\backslash int\_\{S\_o\}^\{S\}n(x,y,z)\backslash sqrt\{x\text{'}^\{2\}+y\text{'}^\{2\}+z\text{'}^\{2\}\}\backslash ,\; ds$

where prime corresponds to d/ds (Marchand, 1978). The light path integral is able to characterize the path of light through the lens in a qualitative manner, such that the lens may be easily reproduced in the future.

The refractive index gradient of GRIN lenses can be mathematically modelled according to the method of production used. For example, GRIN lenses made from a radial gradient index material, such as SELFOC (Flores-Arias et al, 2006), have a refractive index that varies according to:

$n\_\{r\}=n\_\{o\}\backslash left\; (\; 1-\backslash frac\{A\; r^2\}\{2\}\; \backslash right\; )$,

where n_r the refractive index at a distance, r, from the optical axis

Optical axis

An optical axis is a line along which there is some degree of rotational symmetry in an optical system such as a camera lens or microscope.The optical axis is an imaginary line that defines the path along which light propagates through the system...

; n_o is the design index on the optical axis, and A is a positive constant.