Invention:
This innovation is a method of design and fabrication process for polarization aberration compensator, which can be used in existing optical systems to reduce the overall polarization aberration. This method can be used in existing optical systems to greatly reduce the overall polarization aberration in high-performance optical systems such as in microscopy, metrology, lithography, high-resolution imaging, and especially augmented reality or virtual reality (AR/VR) applications. While optical system can be designed to reduce polarization aberration, there is none known that can reduce the polarization aberration to this scale and that can be used with existing AR/VR and other optical systems. The ideal polarization aberration compensator should possess low optical loss, be easy to manufacture, and introduce no new polarization aberration.
Background:
Controlling polarization aberration is an important problem in high performance optical systems, such as microscopy, metrology, lithography, high resolution imaging, display, augmented reality, and virtual reality systems. This is especially relevant for optical system with birefringent and polarizing optical components, such as retarder, polarizer, beam splitter, grating, hologram, metamaterial lens and liquid crystal polymer lens. While it is possible to design and manufacture optical systems with low polarization aberration, often with additional complexity, cost and performance tradeoffs, it is not possible to eliminate completely polarization aberration.
Applications:
- Augmented reality
- Virtual reality
- Microscopy
- Metrology
- Lithography
- High-resolution imaging
Advantages:
- Low optical loss
- Easy to manufacture
- Compatibility to existing system
