Nanoletters – Materials that have subwavelength structure can add degrees of freedom to optical system design that are not possible with bulk materials. Researchers demonstrate two lenses that are composed out of lithographically patterned arrays of elliptical cross-section silicon nanowires, which can dynamically reconfigure their imaging properties in response to the polarization of the illumination. In each element, two different focusing functions are polarization encoded into a single lens. The first nanowire lens has a different focal length for each linear polarization state, thereby realizing the front end of a nonmechanical zoom imaging system. The second nanowire lens has a different optical axis for each linear polarization state, demonstrating stereoscopic image capture from a single physical aperture.
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