Broadband Mid-Wave Infrared Imaging Enabled by All-Silicon Hyperboloid Metalens
Abstract
The mid-wave infrared (MWIR, 3-5 microns) is indispensable for thermal sensing, gas detection, long-range imaging, and free-space optical communications. Meta-optics offer a compact, lightweight, and potentially low-cost alternative to conventional refractive optics, making them attractive for size, weight, and power (SWaP)-constrained systems. However, their strong chromatic dispersion has largely restricted imaging to narrow spectral bands. Here, we demonstrate broadband imaging across the full 3-5 micron MWIR band using a single-layer silicon metasurface coupled with computational reconstruction. Remarkably, the reconstruction model is adapted using only four image captures, overcoming large training data requirements and enabling broadband image recovery despite the strongly wavelength-dependent optical response. In contrast to approaches that engineer complex, dispersion-optimized metalens profiles for broadband operation, our method leverages the wavelength-dependent information encoded by a simple 2cm diameter hyperboloid metalens. We show that this metasurface captures sufficient broadband intensity information for computational reconstruction across the entire MWIR band. These results establish a simple route toward broadband computational meta-optics without requiring broadband achromatic metalens designs, offering a promising platform for compact MWIR imaging systems.
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BibTeX
@misc{johnson2026broadband,
title = {{Broadband Mid-Wave Infrared Imaging Enabled by All-Silicon Hyperboloid Metalens}},
author = {Rose Johnson and Debabrata Mandal and Zihao Zou and Jessie Wei and Anna Wirth-Singh and Vladimir Yarmolik and Johannes Froech and Arka Majumdar and Praneeth Chakravarthula},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.29841},
eprint = {2610.29841},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29841},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Broadband Mid-Wave Infrared Imaging Enabled by All-Silicon Hyperboloid Metalens
AU - Rose Johnson
AU - Debabrata Mandal
AU - Zihao Zou
AU - Jessie Wei
AU - Anna Wirth-Singh
AU - Vladimir Yarmolik
AU - Johannes Froech
AU - Arka Majumdar
AU - Praneeth Chakravarthula
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.29841
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.29841
AB - The mid-wave infrared (MWIR, 3-5 microns) is indispensable for thermal sensing, gas detection, long-range imaging, and free-space optical communications. Meta-optics offer a compact, lightweight, and potentially low-cost alternative to conventional refractive optics, making them attractive for size, weight, and power (SWaP)-constrained systems. However, their strong chromatic dispersion has largely restricted imaging to narrow spectral bands. Here, we demonstrate broadband imaging across the full 3-5 micron MWIR band using a single-layer silicon metasurface coupled with computational reconstruction. Remarkably, the reconstruction model is adapted using only four image captures, overcoming large training data requirements and enabling broadband image recovery despite the strongly wavelength-dependent optical response. In contrast to approaches that engineer complex, dispersion-optimized metalens profiles for broadband operation, our method leverages the wavelength-dependent information encoded by a simple 2cm diameter hyperboloid metalens. We show that this metasurface captures sufficient broadband intensity information for computational reconstruction across the entire MWIR band. These results establish a simple route toward broadband computational meta-optics without requiring broadband achromatic metalens designs, offering a promising platform for compact MWIR imaging systems.
ER -