pixels and pictures

A team of researchers at Harvard are trying to revolutionize the world of optical lenses. Instead of traditional curved lenses that suffer from various optical flaws, they are working on a completely flat and ultra-thin lens that overcomes age-old problems and pushes optical quality to the limits of the laws of nature.

We first reported on the lens back in 2012, when the research group, led by professor Federico Capasso, unveiled a prototype to the world. That 60 nanometer lens — about the thickness your fingernails grow in 1 minute — was able to focus light “completely accurately,” but it could only work with a single wavelength of light instead of the entire visible spectrum.

Still, at the time, Harvard boasted that the lens’ focusing power “approaches the ultimate physical limit set by the laws of optics”