In many modern optical applications, achieving the greatest possible compactness is one of the most sought-after optimization goals. There are many reasons for this: portable devices have less installation space for the optical components, and smaller systems tend to have lower weight and material costs. One recently proposed ingenious strategy in this field are “space plates”: Meta-surfaces allow to imitate a propagation in free space much longer than the actual thickness of the plate. For example, such elements allow the distance behind a focusing lens to be shortened to achieve focus (without changing the NA). In this example we showcase the characteristic of a space plate by a multilayered metamaterial proposed by Orad Reshef et al. and study its behavior in the optical modeling and design software VirtualLab Fusion.
