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Inconsistencies of metalens performance and comparison with conventional diffractive optics

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We posit that inconsistent interpretations of experimental data have led to inaccurate claims on metalens focusing efficiencies. By performing a meta-analysis, we show that extraordinary claims of high focusing efficiency at high numerical apertures are, unfortunately, not yet backed by rigorous simulation or experimental results.

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Fig. 1: Focusing efficiency of the ideal Airy disk and illustration of diffraction orders from flat lenses.

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Acknowledgements

Support from grants N6560-NV-ONR and NASA NNL16AA05C are gratefully acknowledged. We thank H. Smith, H. Li and O. Miller for fruitful discussions.

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Correspondence to Rajesh Menon.

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Competing interests

R.M. has financial interest in Oblate Optics, Inc., which is commercializing flat lenses.

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Nature Photonics thanks Uriel Levy and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2 and Supplementary Table 1.

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Menon, R., Sensale-Rodriguez, B. Inconsistencies of metalens performance and comparison with conventional diffractive optics. Nat. Photon. 17, 923–924 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01306-w

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