Gradient-index (GRIN) optics is the branch of optics covering optical effects produced by a gradual variation of the refractive index of a material. Such variations can be used to produce lenses with flat surfaces, or lenses that do not have the aberrations typical of traditional spherical lenses. Gradient-index lenses may have a refraction gradient that is spherical, axial, or radial.
History
In 1854, J C Maxwell suggested a lens whose refractive index distribution would allow for every region of space to be sharply imaged. Known as the Maxwell fisheye lens, it involves a spherical index function and would be expected to be spherical in shape as well (Maxwell, 1854). This lens, however, is impractical to make and has little usefulness since only points on the surface and within the lens are sharply imaged and extended objects suffer from extreme aberrations. In 1905, R W Wood used a dipping technique creating a gelatin cylinder with a refractive index gradient that varied symmetrically with the radial distance from the axis. Disk-shaped slices of the cylinder were later shown to have plane faces with radial index distribution. He showed that even though the faces of the lens were flat, they acted like converging and diverging lens depending on whether the index was a decreasing or increasing relative to the radial distance (Wood, 1905). In 1964, a posthumous book of R. K. Luneburg was published in which he described a lens that focuses incident parallel rays of light onto a point on the opposite surface of the lens (Luneburg, 1964). This also limits the applications of the lens because it is difficult to use it to focus visible light; however, it has some usefulness in microwave applications.
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