Topology-optimized source shifter for optical location camouflaging

Abstract

Through engineering the emission features emanating from a light source, source illusions enable the generation of illusions in which observers viewing at a distance misperceive the actual state of the source. However, those few efforts are significantly limited to the source transformation and metamaterials used. This limitation makes high-performance camouflaging of source emissions difficult to achieve. Even with basic functionalities such as source shifters camouflaging, source location remains difficult because the illusion is of low quality. Here, we demonstrate a way to improve substantially the camouflaging performance of a light-source shifter using topology optimization. Its scheme, objective function, and a few constraints are proposed. Generating an optimal topology for an all-dielectric light-source shifter is attempted for optical location camouflaging. Moreover, we succeed in designing very simple but high-performing source shifters despite several difficult properties such as multimodality. Our proposal extends the distance between the actual and virtual source locations that can be camouflaged and generates a broad band of frequencies for optical location camouflaging.