OSE Seminar by Dr. Federico Capasso on Flat Optics: from structured light and dark to high performance metaoptics for mass markets
Departmental News
Posted: December 4, 2023
Departmental News
Date: Thursday, December 7, 2023
Time: 12:45 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Location: Zoom Only
Abstract:
Metaoptics offer fresh opportunities for structuring light as well as dark. I will discuss metasurfaces that enable light’s spin and OAM to evolve, simultaneously, from one state to another along the propagation direction1,2, along with nonlocal supercell designs that demonstrate multiple independent optical functions at arbitrary large deflection angles with high efficiency.3 In one implementation the incident laser is simultaneously diffracted into Gaussian, helical and Bessel beams over a large angular range and in another one a compact wavelength-tunable external cavity laser with arbitrary beam control capabilities including hologram lasing is demonstrated. We also propose a new class of computer-generated holograms whose far-fields have designer-specified polarization response, dubbed Jones matrix holograms.3 We provide a simple procedure for their implementation using form-birefringent metasurfaces. In particular, we demonstrate holograms whose far-fields implement parallel polarization analysis and custom waveplate-like behavior. The realization of 2D phase and polarization singularities and the unique applications that they will open will be discussed4 ,along with recent results on the realization of an equally spaced liner array of 0D phase singularities using inversed designed cylindrically symmetric phase only metasurfaces.5 Finally, a complete, topologically protected polarization singularity has been reported for the first time; it is located in the 4D space spanned by the three spatial dimensions and the wavelength and is created in the focal region of a lens using a metasurface.6 The field Jacobian plays a key role in the design of such higher dimensional singularities, which can be extended to multidimensional wave phenomena, and pave the way to novel applications in topological photonics. I will conclude by giving the state-of-the-art of metalenses including their high-volume manufacturing for consumer electronics.
References
1. Ahmed H. Dorrah, Noah A. Rubin, Aun Zaidi, Michele Tamagnone & Federico Capasso Nature Photonics 15, 287 (2021)
2. Ahmed H Dorrah, Noah A Rubin, Michele Tamagnone, Aun Zaidi, & Federico Capasso Nature Communications 12, 6249 (2021)
3. Noah A. Rubin, Aun Zaidi, Ahmed H. Dorrah, Zhujun Shi, & Federico Capasso Science Advances, 7, eabg7488 (2021)
4. Soon Wei Daniel Lim, Joon-Suh Park, Maryna L. Meretska, Ahmed H. Dorrah, & Federico Capasso Nature Communications, 12, 4190 (2021)
5. Soon Wei Daniel Lim, Joon-Suh Park, Dmitry Kazakov, Christina M. Spaegele, Ahmed H. Dorrah, M. L. Meretska, Federico Capasso Nature Communications, 14, 3237 (2023)
6. Christina M. Spaegele, Michele Tamagnone, Soon Wei Daniel Lim, Marcus Ossiander, Maryna Meretska, Federico Capasso Science Advances, 9, eadh03 (2023)
Biography:
Dr. Federico Capasso
Federico Capasso is the Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard University, which he joined in 2003 after 27 years at Bell Labs where his career advanced from postdoctoral fellow to VP for Physical Research. His contributions include band structure engineering, the quantum cascade laser, MEMS based on the Casimir effect and the first measurement of the repulsive Casimir force, metasurfaces including the generalized laws of refraction and reflection and high performance metalenses. He is cofounder and a board member of Metalenz (https://www.metalenz.com/), which commercializes metaoptics for high volume markets.
He is a 2023 Citation Laureate of The Institute for Scientific Information. His awards include the Yves Medal of Optica, the Balzan Prize in Applied Photonics, the King Faisal Prize, the IEEE Edison Medal, the American Physical Society Arthur Schawlow Prize, the AAAS Rumford Prize, the Materials Research Society Medal, the Jan Czochralski Award for lifetime achievements in Materials Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS).
