Wu Meta-Optics Laboratory
Metamaterial and Metasurface
Metamaterials composed of artificial sub-wavelength structures with novel optical properties which cannot be obtained from natural materials. Since their optical responses are derived from structural shapes, geometries, sizes, etc, rather than material composition, metamaterials have emerged as a new frontier of nano-optics and nano-photonics. Metasurfaces can be regarded as a single metamaterial layer, which consists of artificially designed arrays of optical scatterers. They enable abrupt changes to the electromagnetic amplitude and/or phase of scattered light within a sub-wavelength spatial region, offering a promising approach to tailor the light properties in demand and benefiting the development of flat optical components and systems.
Tunable Flat Optics
The incorporation of metasurface optics with active materials can spatio-temporally modulate the fundamental attributes of electromagnetic wave such as phase, amplitude, polarization, angular momentum and so on, and mold the wavefront of the reflected or the transmitted light at nano-scale, benefiting the exploration and exploitation of advanced science and technology from academia to industry. The potential candidates of tunable materials can be phase-changed materials, 2D heterostructures (graphene, TMDC, etc), III-V semiconductors, transparent conducting oxide (TCO), liquid crystal, etc.
Quantum Light Control
Quantum technology is a new cutting-edge research that synergizes physics and engineering, transitioning properties of quantum mechanics including superposition and entanglement into practical applications such as computation, communication, quantum sensing and enhanced imaging, information processing, etc. Among all resources, entanglement is of fundamental interest and can serve as the central scheme, therefore, the ability to generate and control quantum entanglement over different degrees of freedom is at the heart of quantum science.