Virtual-Moving Metalens Array Enabling Light-Field Imaging with Enhanced Resolution

The light-field (LF) imaging technique can obtain the light intensity and directional ray distribution information by utilizing a microlens array (MLA). Based on the recoded 3D information, full-parallax or depth-slice images can be reconstructed. Due to the limited ray sampling rate of the MLA, however, conventional LF imaging schemes are fatally susceptible to a trade-off between the spatial and angular resolution. To mitigate this issue, a virtual-moving metalens array (VMMA) based on a multifunctional dielectric metasurface is proposed, which can laterally shift the sampling position without physical movement, by simply tailoring the polarization of incident beam. Thanks to the polarization-tailored VMMA, the LF imaging scheme is successfully realized to provide a fourfold enhanced spatial resolution without sacrificing the angular resolution.