Metasurfaces Offer New Way to Manipulate Light

by American Institute of Physics

Metasurface materials are essentially flat optical elements made of a dense array of nanoscale optical antennas that can receive and redirect incident light. While their primary use so far is for shaping optical wavefronts—to focus light, actively redirect beams, and create holograms—they can also be used to detect and emit light with new levels of control. In a compact form factor, metasurface materials can be easily integrated with electronics and stacked, and this opens the door to new types of imaging and solid-state lighting systems.

It’s a great time for students, researchers and companies to enter the field of nanoscale photonics, and at the OSA Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science APS/DLS Conference you can hear why. The conference is organized around four themes, each with its own Visionary Speaker, including Mark Brongersma, a professor in the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Stanford University.

Many fundamental questions remain open about how light interacts with nanostructured and quantum materials, Brongersma said, and he’ll discuss how one particular type of optical element—a metasurface—is changing the way light can be manipulated in optical systems.

“This area of research is important because we can start replacing bulky optical components, such as lenses, gratings, curved mirrors, and components in light sources and cameras, etc., with more convenient flat optical elements,” said Brongersma. “Nanostructures that support optical resonances are the key to the operation of these flat optical elements.”

Creating flat counterparts for bulky optical elements could enable an entirely new toolkit for building optical systems. “Such systems have the potential to be more compact, lightweight, offer new functions, and consume less power,” Brongersma said. “This concept can be applied at any frequency, so it stands to be extremely helpful in many fields of optics.”

Posted: 13 Sep 2018 by American Institute of Physics