About This Webinar
Metasurfaces are sub-wavelength spaced arrays of nanostructures that enable the design of ultrathin optical components with superior aberration control and ease of optical alignment compared to refractive optics, leading to a major reduction in complexity and footprint and to functions not available in standard optics. Flat optics will lead to the unification of semiconductor manufacturing and lens-making, where the planar technology to manufacture integrated circuits will be used to make CMOS-compatible lenses for high-volume market products like cell phones. Metasurfaces have led to polarization optics that do not rely on birefringent materials and to the realization of ultracompact, single-shot, polarization-sensitive cameras. Metasurfaces also enable new depth-sensing cameras inspired by the eyes of jumping spiders.
Metasurfaces can be designed to perform multiple and independent optical functions, depending on the incident polarization, angle, or wavelength. They can also provide unique opportunities to design optical wavefronts at will, both in the transverse plane as well along the propagation direction. Metasurface attributes and applications are presented in this keynote address. The talk also includes a demonstration of 2D-phase and polarization singularities (“structured dark”) and the applications they will allow.
***This presentation premiered during the 2022
Photonics Spectra Conference. For more information on Photonics Media conferences, visit
events.photonics.com.
About the presenter:
Federico Capasso, Ph.D., 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 Vice President for Physical Research. He has made contributions to optics and photonics, nanoscience, materials science, and QED. He pioneered bandgap engineering, leading him to the invention of the quantum cascade laser (QCL). He and his group carried out seminal research on flat optics based on metasurfaces, as well as fundamental studies of the Casimir force. He is a co-author of over 500 publications and holds 70 US patents.
Awards Capasso has received include the Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Prize and the Robert Wood Prize of
Optica, the Balzan Prize in Applied Photonics, the IEEE Edison Medal, the IEEE David Sarnoff Award, the IEEE Streifer Award, the APS Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, the King Faisal Prize, the AAAS Rumford Prize, the Enrico Fermi Prize, the European Physical Society Quantum Electronics Prize, the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the MRS Medal, the Czochralski Award for lifetime achievements in Materials Science, the Rank Prize and the Matteucci Medal.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Academia Europaea, the Accademia dei Lincei, a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). He holds honorary doctorates from Lund University, Diderot University and the University of Bologna. He is a board member of Metalenz, which he co-founded and is focused on bringing to market metalenses and cameras for high-volume markets. He is also a board member of Pendar Technologies.