Patent ID: 9618664
Date: 2017-04-11
CPC Classifications: G02B

Claim:
1. An optical element comprising a transmissive layer comprising first and second optical media, wherein: (a) the first and second optical media are substantially transparent over an operational wavelength range including a design vacuum wavelength λ (b) the first and second optical media are arranged within the layer as a contiguous multitude of discrete volumes, including a subset of volumes of the multitude having a largest transverse dimension less than about λ (c) the contiguous multitude of discrete volumes is arranged so that (i) any given simply connected sample volume of the transmissive layer, said sample volume having transverse dimensions about equal to λ (d) the discrete volumes of the multitude are distributed on the transmissive layer so that (2π/λ (e) the optical element is structurally arranged so as to receive an optical signal incident on the first surface within the transmission region and to transmit or reflect at least a portion of the incident optical signal transformed substantially according to the effective phase transformation function φ