Structural optimization of optical elements for photonic processing

Modern computational resources have revolutionized the optimization of materials research for creating advanced photonic elements. These same computational resources are in such demand that alternative formats of compute technology are being pursued, which has reignited interest in photonic processing. This talk will review our progress towards the design of optical elements for a variety of applications. We have studied the optimization of meta-optical elements for metalense technology, the optimization of periodic metamaterials for image processing applications, and the exploration of unorthodox structural designs to miniaturize existing optical elements. All of these studies are driven by our motivation to pursue advanced technologies for the vehicle, including internal and external sensors, reduced power consumption, and the optical revolution of data management systems.