It typically takes several independently-controlled components to fully manipulate the various degrees of freedom (e.g. wavelength, shape, and power) of a laser beam. In this publication, we show that a single reflective metasurface and a laser diode can exert full control of the shape and intensity of diffraction orders. The design does not require any rotating components and is compact. The research has applications in quantum sensing and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) headsets. 

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Do black holes come to mind when you think about singularities? In optics, singularities occur when one or more parameters are undefined, and are also associated with non-intuitive phenomena such as energy backflow and superoscillations. While the vast majority of optical singularities take the form of string-like lines and loops, this paper introduces a technique to engineer singularities belonging to a wider class of shapes. As a demonstration, the authors engineer sheet singularities that have heart-shaped cross-sections, then realize these light fields experimentally using...

Metalenz, Inc., a startup spun-off from the Capasso group, has been mentioned in a recent New York Times article "These Materials Could Make Science Fiction a Reality" by John Markoff. Read the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/science/metamaterials-technology.html

Metalenz, Inc., a startup spun-off from the Capasso group, has revealed its plans for revolutionizing consumer electronics by large-scale fabrication of flat optics to replace conventional lenses. Metalenz has received $10 million in investment from various venture capital funds including 3M Ventures and Intel Capital. 

Metalenses are ultrathin nanostructures that allow one to sculpt the properties of light at the nanoscale. The Capasso group pioneered flat optics...

We are delighted to announce that Professor Capasso has been awarded the 2021 Frederic Ives Medal and Jarus W. Quinn Prize from the Optical Society of America (OSA). This award recognizes overall distinction in optics and is the highest award of the society. This year, this award was given to Professor Capasso for his work on optical physics, quantum electronics and nanophotonics. 

Congratulations from all of us at the Capasso group! 

Read the OSA article...

Metasurface polarization optics—platforms that can structure light’s polarization point-by-point at the nanoscale—have enabled compact polarization imaging and characterization systems. However, so far these schemes (and conventional polarization optics) can only control incoming polarization in one plane, transverse to the propagation direction. In a recent effort, we have introduced a new class of metasurface polarization optics which can perform parallel processing on incoming light over multiple planes along the propagation direction. After a single interaction with our new devices,...