Walter Furlan

By Federico J. Machado, Juan A. Monsoriu and Walter D. Furlan

Vortex lenses produce special wavefronts with zero-axial intensity, and helical phase structure. The variations of the phase and amplitude of the vortex produce a circular flow of energy that allows transmitting orbital angular momentum. This property is especially in optical trapping, because due to the orbital angular momentum of light, they have the ability to set the trapped particles into rotation. Vortex lenses engraved in diffractive optical elements have been proposed in the last few years. These lenses can be described mathematically as a two-dimensional (2D) function, which expressed in polar coordinates are the product of two different separable one-dimensional (1D) functions: One, depends only on the square of radial coordinate, and the other one depends linearly on the azimuthal coordinate and includes the topological charge. The 1D function that depends on the radial coordinate is known as a zone plate. Here, vortex lenses, constructed using different aperiodic zone plates, are reviewed. Their optical properties are studied numerically by computing the intensity distribution along the optical axis and the transverse diffraction patterns along the propagation direction. It is shown that these elements are able to create a chain of optical traps with a tunable separation, strength and transverse section.

Part of the book: Vortex Dynamics and Optical Vortices

By Diego Montagud-Martínez, Vicente Ferrando, Salvador Garcia-Delpech, Juan A. Monsoriu and Walter D. Furlan

A new class of corneal inlays for treatment of presbyopia is described, which uses diffraction as the working principle. The inlay consists of an opaque disk with a small central aperture surrounded by an array of micro-holes that are distributed following the order of a given Fresnel zone plate having N zones. In this way, the central hole of the disk produces an extension of the depth of focus of the eye for distance vision and contributes to the zero order of diffraction, and the light diffracted by the micro-holes in the periphery produces a real focus for near vision. In our general design, the number of zones and the diameter of the central hole are free parameters that can be used to design customized devices with different addition power and near-focus intensity. Two different designs are analyzed to show this property. In the analysis, we employed a ray tracing software to study the performance of the new inlays in the two different model eyes. The results are compared with those obtained with a model of the small-aperture inlay that is currently in the market. The different merit functions used in the comparison and the image simulations performed with the inlays in the model eyes show the excellent performance of our proposal.

Part of the book: Visual Impairment and Blindness