Large Field-of-View Thermal Imaging via All-Silicon Meta-Optics

A broad range of imaging and sensing technologies in the infrared require large Field-of-View (FoV) operation. To achieve this, traditional refractive systems often employ multiple elements to compensate for aberrations, which leads excess size, weight, cost. For many applications, including night vision eye-wear, air-borne surveillance, autonomous navigation unmanned aerial vehicles, size weight are highly constrained. Sub-wavelength diffractive optics, also known as meta-optics, can dramatically reduce cost these systems, meta-optics significantly thinner lighter than lenses. Here, we demonstrate 80$^\circ$ FoV thermal long-wavelength regime (8-12 $\mu$m) using an all-silicon meta-optic with entrance aperture lens focal length 1 cm.