Brainy light sensors with no diffraction limitations

Abstract

In total ignorance of what a scene contains, imaging systems are extremely useful. But if we know the scene will be comprised of no more than a few distant point sources, nonimaging systems may achieve better accuracy in a smaller, more rugged, and less expensive manner. We show here that those advantages can be realized in a wide variety of designs. All can beat the diffraction limit under the proper circumstances. We call these sensors "brainy" in analogy to anima; vision which uses poor optics processed by a wonderful computer - a brain.