Path Towards Large Space Bandwidth Product Spatial Light Modulator

Shaping an optical wavefront with sub-wavelength spatial resolution is important for various applications with far-reaching scientific and technological impacts (e.g., in adaptive optics and imaging through turbid, disordered media) and commercial interest (e.g., LIDAR for autonomous transportation and pixelated holography). The primary enabling technology for such capability is a compact optical phase shifter, which can change the phase of the incident light by a full 360 degree with low energy and high frequency (~MHz). Existing tunable optical technologies cannot provide this functionality; mechanically tunable modulators can reach a speed of only a few kHz, while liquid-crystal based modulators operate at 100’s of Hz. The pixel size of the spatial light modulator is also on the order of tens of wavelengths, which increases the energy consumption per pixel.<br/>In this talk, I will discuss our effort to tune meta-optics using non-volatile phase-change materials. Additionally, I will talk about varifocal meta-lens using micro-mechanical actuators. Apart from physical tuning, we can also implement varifocal functionality using computational techniques. Finally, I will discuss the issues of scalability of meta-optics based spatial-light modulation, and how we can use static meta-optics to effectively scale the number of tunable pixels in a spatial light modulator.