Visible achromatic super-oscillatory metasurfaces for sub-diffraction focusing

Conventional optical lenses enable precise foci but suffer from the diffraction limit due to the cutoff of spatial frequencies. Development of a super-oscillatory phenomenon offers an alternative approach to realize far-field sub-diffraction focusing. However, most super-oscillatory lenses exhibit a strong dependence on incident wavelengths, resulting in a narrow-band working frequency due to a fragile super-oscillatory field. Here, for the first time, achromatic super-oscillatory metasurfaces (ASOMs) are proposed to simultaneously steer optical fields at visible wavelengths of 473 nm, 532 nm and 632.8 nm and to achieve focusing at the same axial position with a resolution beyond the diffraction limit. These metasurface-based devices provide dispersionless phase profiles so that the material dispersion can be neglected in the optimization process. In addition, the design strategy can effectively circumvent the axial chromatic aberration observed in previously demonstrated metasurfaces. Constructed ASOMs are further verified numerically and simulated results for one ASOM with spot sizes of 0.706, 0.722 and 0.750 times the diffraction limit at the preset plane are consistent with the designs. Furthermore, benefiting from flexible and arbitrary phase modulations of the metasurface, the proposed method gives more freedom for a design of a super-oscillatory field and enables a lightweight, low-cost and compact optical element to replace the bulky doublet/triplet lens in a conventional optical system.