Abstract:
Light fields encompass multiple physical dimensions including amplitude, phase, and polarization. Breaking through the dimensional constraints of conventional photodetection to rapidly and precisely acquire multidimensional information of light field holds significant importance for optical sensing, demonstrating substantial application value in fields like machine vision and biomedicine. Optical metasurfaces, with their exceptional multidimensional wavefront manipulation capabilities, are accelerating the miniaturization and integration of optical multidimensional imaging architectures. This work proposes a novel single-layer metasurface framework enabling single-shot optical multidimensional imaging, utilizing a four-channel polarization-encoded metasurface for space- and polarization-multiplexing of orthogonal circular polarization components to achieve multifocal imaging with independently controllable focal lengths. Quantitative phase retrieval of orthogonal circular polarization components is achieved via the transport of intensity equation (TIE), simultaneously capturing intensity, phase, and polarization ellipticity information in a single exposure. Integrated into a commercial microscope, this architecture successfully demonstrates quantitative phase reconstruction of liquid crystal microlens arrays and polarization imaging of murine tendon tissues. The research exhibits potential application prospects in live-cell monitoring, clinical testing, and diagnostics.