Dielectric metasurfaces with fast and ultra-fast tunability

Abstract

This talk will overview the recent advances and challenges in tunable metasurfaces. I will discuss metasurface tunability through several mechanisms, including electrical and all-optical drive. Such drives allows for fast and ultrafast response with high modulation strength. We demonstrate the how all-optical control can lead to and high ultrafast transmission modulation of 80%. The presented developments hold promises for real-world applications of active meta-optics. Optical metasurfaces are sub-wavelength patterned surfaces that interact strongly with light. The field has been driven by the key advantages of this technology, including the ultimate miniaturization of optical elements, empowering novel functionalities that process hidden modalities of light, and the opportunity to tune their properties on demand. Several exciting applications have been demonstrated over the past years, including high-efficiency metalenses and holograms. However, many exciting new applications require metasurfaces with dynamically reconfigurable and programable functionalities. Such applications include 3D imaging, holographic displays, and light detection and ranging (LIDAR). This talk will overview the recent advances and challenges in reconfiguring optical metasurfaces. I will discuss metasurface tunability by utilizing different control mechanisms to tune the properties of the constituent elements. In particular, I will present the development of optically and electrically driven metasurfaces to perform fast amplitude modulation. We demonstrate the highest ultrafast modulation of over 80% and multi-pixel operation with over 70% transmission modulation. The presented developments aim to advance the field of tunable optical metasurface for real-world applications of active meta-optics.