A Computational Design Framework for Efficient, Fabrication Error-Tolerant, Planar THz Diffractive Optical Elements

We demonstrate ultra-thin (1.5-3λ(0)), fabrication-error tolerant efficient diffractive terahertz (THz) optical elements designed using a computer-aided optimization-based search algorithm. The basic operation of these components is modeled using scalar diffraction of electromagnetic waves through a pixelated multi-level 3D-printed polymer structure. Through the proposed design framework, we demonstrate the design of various ultrathin planar THz optical elements, namely (i) a high Numerical Aperture (N.A.), broadband aberration rectified spherical lens (0.1 THz–0.3 THz), (ii) a spectral splitter (0.3 THz–0.6 THz) and (iii) an on-axis broadband transmissive hologram (0.3 THz–0.5 THz). Such an all-dielectric computational design-based approach is advantageous against metallic or dielectric metasurfaces from the perspective that it incorporates all the inherent structural advantages associated with a scalar diffraction based approach, such as (i) ease of modeling, (ii) substrate-less facile manufacturing, (iii) planar geometry, (iv) high efficiency along with (v) broadband operation, (vi) area scalability and (vii) fabrication error-tolerance. With scalability and error tolerance being two major bottlenecks of previous design strategies. This work is therefore, a significant step towards the design of THz optical elements by bridging the gap between structural and computational design i.e. through a hybrid design-based approach enabling considerably less computational resources than the previous state of the art. Furthermore, the approach used herein can be expanded to a myriad of optical elements at any wavelength regime.