Personal details
Name: Federico Capasso
Address:
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University
205 A Pierce Hall
29 Oxford Street
Cambridge MA 02138
Phone: (617) 384-7611
Fax: (617) 495-2875
Email: capasso@seas.harvard.edu
Personal: Married; two children
Citizenship: Italian and US (Naturalized; 09/23/1992)
Education
1973
Doctor of Physics, Summa Cum Laude
University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy
1973-1974
Postdoctoral Fellow,
Fondazione Bordoni, Rome, Italy
Academic Appointments
Jan. 2003 - present
Robert Wallace Professor of Applied Physics
Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Professional Positions
2000 – 2002
Vice President of Physical Research, Bell Laboratories Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ
1997- 2000
Department Head, Semiconductor Physics Research, Bell Laboratories Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ.
1987- 1997
Department Head, Quantum Phenomena and Device Research, Bell Laboratories Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T Bell Labs, until 1996), Murray Hill, NJ
1984 – 1987
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
1977 – 1984
Member of Technical Staff, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
1976 – 1977
Visiting Scientist, Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
1974 – 1976
Research Physicist, Fondazione Bordoni, Rome, Italy
Citations (Google Scholar): Over 118 000
H-index (Google Scholar): 161
Publications: Over 700 peer-reviewed journals
Patents: Over 70 US patents
Key achievements
1. Bandstructure Engineering.and Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCLs)
Capasso and his Bell Labs collaborators over a 20-year period pioneered band-structure engineering, a technique to design and implement artificially structured (“man-made”) semiconductor, materials, and related phenomena/ devices, which revolutionized heterojunction devices in photonics and electronics. Quantum Cascade lasers represent the most important highlight of this research. Invented and demonstrated by Capasso and his group (Science 264, 553 (1994), over 6000 citations). Unlike diode laser they are unipolar lases based on new operating principle. Their emission wavelength can be tailored over an extreme broad range by changing nanometer layer thickness while using the same materials. They have revolutionized mid-infrared photonics, as they represent the first high performance and reliable semiconductor lasers for this technologically and scientifically important spectral region. They are finding widespread use in scientific and industrial applications: high-resolution spectroscopy, chemical sensing and trace gas analysis, atmospheric chemistry, combustion and medical diagnostics. They are widely commercialized by many companies.
2. Metasurfaces and Flat optics
The seminal paper (Science 334 333 (2011), over 5500 citations) of Capasso and his group is widely recognized has the one which introduced subwavelength structured surfaces (metasurfaces) as a powerful and flexible tool for wavefront control by judicious design of the local phase, amplitude and polarization. This paper generalized the textbook laws of reflection and refraction and demonstrated them for a general class of designer metasurfaces. Capasso pioneered the use of metasurfaces as a platform for Flat Optics demonstrating metalenses with superior aberration control compared to conventional diffractive optics (Fresnel) and refractive optics, with much less thickness and complexity and ease of optical alignment. Highlights are the first high performance diffraction limited dielectric metalens in the visible (Science 352, 1190 (2016), over 1750 citations), the first single broadband achromatic lens and the correction of third order aberration including field curvature with a single metaoptic. This work triggered a large scale scientific and industrial effort, propelled by Capasso’s vision that since metaoptic can be fabricated by large scale fabrication techniques of semiconductor industry (DUV lithography), this will lead to a convergence of CMOS technology and lens making. Metasurfaces have therefore major advantages with respect to bulk metamaterials in terms of technological impact. The latter suffer from major fabrication complexities at optical wavelengths, greatly limiting their application potential.
In the area of polarization, the impact of flat optics has also been major leading to new compact high performance in line and terminating polarimeters. A powerful generalization of Fourier optics introduced (Matrix Fourier Optics) by Capasso and his team has led them to the demonstration of a new single shot ultracompact polarization sensitive camera consisting of a single metasurface and a sensor, which pixel by pixel reconstruct in real time the full Stokes vector of the scene, exhibiting superior performance to existing cameras based on division of amplitude, time and focal plane (Science 365, 6448 (2019), 150 citations). Capasso has published many seminal breakthrough papers on plasmonic metasurfaces. He demonstrated collimators on the facet of semiconductor laser for beam shaping in the near- and farfield, the earliest successful application of metasurfaces in active devices. He has obtained fundamental new results on the propagation of surface plasmons, such as the polarization controlled directional coupling of surface plasmon polaritons leading him to the first direct evidence of spin momentum locking in optics, and the demonstration of a localized long-range nondiffracting surface wave, the Cosine-Gauss plasmon beam.
In a highly cited paper (Science 328 1135 (2010), 1440 citations) he and Naomi Halas group demonstrated core-shell nanoparticles clusters (trimers, quadrumers and heptamers) as building blocks of a new class of optical materials, exhibiting magnetic activity in the near infrared and giant Fano resonances.
3. Casimir forces
This research has focused on basic studies of the Casimir effect, i.e. the attractive force between uncharged metals and dielectrics, with the goal of designing these quantum electrodynamical forces by control of quantum fluctuations through changes (shapes and materials) of the boundary conditions of the electromagnetic fields. Highlights of this highly cited work are:
• Demonstration of actuators using the Casimir force, based on MEMS (Science 291, 1941 (2001), 1000 citations). This work explored the limits imposed by QED on MEMS technology and its potential in modifying and designing these forces.
• First measurement of the repulsive Casimir-Lifshitz force (Nature 457 170, (2009), 660 citations) an effect first predicted in the nineteen sixties, the Capasso proposed as a tool to control friction in new ways.
Entrepeneurship
2010
Cofounded EOS Photonics to market Quantum Cascade Laser based sensors of gases for atmospheric science and security; standoff detection of hazardous vapors and condensed phase materials; molecular spectroscopy and power scaling. It merged in 2015 with Pendar Medical to form Pendar Technologies (http://www.pendartechnologies.com/) which is focused on bringing breakthrough portable analysis and monitoring systems to market.
2016
Cofounded Metalenz (http://metalenz.com) focused on bringing to market metalenses for high-volume applications (cell phones and sensors). It is supported by major strategic investors such as Intel, 3M and Applied Materials and had in 2021 its first major product launch:
Honors
Awards
2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF)
2023 Citation Laureate, Clarivate
2021 Frederic Ives Medal and Jarus W. Quinn Prize, Optical Society of America
2020 Honorary Award, IEEE Italy Section
2019 Matteucci Medal, Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze, detta dei XL
2019 Guglelmo Marconi Science Award, UNICO
2018 Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society
2017 Kenneth Button Prize, International Society of Infrared, Millimeter and Terahertz Waves and Institute of Physics (UK)
2016 Balzan Prize for Applied Photonics, Balzan Foundation
2015 Rumford Prize, American Academy of Arts and Science
2013 Gold Medal of SPIE
2013 European Physical Society Quantum Electronics and Optics Award
2013 Humboldt Research Award
2011 Jan Czochralski Award of the European Materials Research Society
2011 Galileo Galilei Medal of the Italian Society for Optics and Photonics
2010 Julius Springer Prize in Applied Physics
2010 Berthold Leibinger Zukunft Prize (Future prize)
2005 King Faisal International Prize for Science
2005 Gold Medal of the President of Italy for meritorious achievement in science
2004 Edison Medal, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
2004 Arthur Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, American Physical Society
2004 Tommasoni & Chisesi Prize for Outstanding Achievements in Physics
2003 Goff Smith Prize and Lecture, University of Michigan
2002 Duddell Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics (London, UK)
2001 Robert Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America
2000 Willis E. Lamb Medal for Laser Physics and Quantum Optics
2000 NASA Group Achievement Award
1998 IEEE/Laser & Electrooptics Society W. Streifer Award for Scientific Achievement
1998 Rank Prize in Optoelectronics (UK)
1998 Capitolium Prize of the Mayor of Rome, Italy
1997 Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute
1997 Bell Laboratories Fellow Award
1995 Materials Research Society Medal
1995 Moet Hennessy·Louis Vuitton “Leonardo da Vinci” Award of Excellence (France)
1995 Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Assosciation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for best paper published in Science
1995 Electronics Letters Prize of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (London, UK)
1994 Heinrich Welker Memorial Medal (Germany) and International CompoundSemiconductors Symposium Award
1993 The New York Academy of Sciences Award
1991 IEEE David Sarnoff Award in Electronics
1984 Bell Laboratories Distinguished Member of Technical Staff Award
Memberships/Fellowships
2019 Fellow, National Academy of Inventors
2015 Member, Academia Europaea
2012 Foreign Member, Accademia dei Lincei
1995 Member, National Academy of Sciences
1996 Member, National Academy of Engineering
1998 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1999 Fellow, The Institute of Physics (UK)
1997 Honorary Member, of the Franklin Institute
1992 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
1991 Fellow, International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE)
1989 Fellow, Optical Society of America
1987 Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
1986 Fellow, American Physical Society
Honorary Doctorates and Other Honors
2019 Honorary issue of Nanophotonics (Volume 7, Issue 6, Jun 2018) for Federico Capasso on “Metamaterials & Metasurfaces”
2011 Honorary Doctorate, University Paris Diderot, France
2011 Honorary Doctorate of Technology, Lund University, Sweden
2011 Honorary Doctorate in Materials Science, University of Roma III, Italy
2003 Honorary Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy
2004 Commendatore of the Italian Republic