Interesting new lens technology (Link)

[Tristin]

http://m.dpreview.com/news/1219259020/new-glassless-metalens-is-100-000x-thinner-than-conventional-optics

[richardHaw]

what sorcery is this!?

[Tristin]

Currently a very specialized optical sorcery, but the possible applications for this as a base are numerous and powerful.

[richardHaw]

i hope that it wont get fungus

i can see some uses in the medical field.

[Les Olson]

The original paper is at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1190 - behind a pay wall, however.  More technical details are free at http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2016/jun/02/high-efficiency-flat-lenses-shrink-down-to-the-nanoscale

It is the Rayleigh criterion and the Airy disc again: the diameter of two points just resolvable = 1.22 x numerical aperture x wavelength of light.  They can achieve effective NA = 0.8: the diameter of the Airy disc can be below the wavelength, which is what they mean by "sub-wavelength resolution". 

The catch is that the process only works with polarised light, and at present can only focus one visible wavelength at a time.  Unless and until they solve that problem the approach will only work with single-wavelength imaging - which is OK for microscopy but not so good for photography.  The other issue is that the best they could do was get 86% of light to be image-forming: ie, flare is a problem for imaging.