Published in Physics World, 22 Jan 2010
Physicists in the UK have created a Luneburg lens – a lens able to focus light from all directions equally well – on a silicon chip. The device could one day find applications in on-chip Fourier optics, which are used by the telecoms industry to perform tasks from noise reduction to data compression.
Most practical lenses have aberrations, which means that their ability to focus light deteriorates when the incident light is off-axis. But in the Luneburg lens, proposed over 60 years ago, focusing is equally good wherever the light comes from. […]
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