EE Colloquia: A wide-angle view on metasurface optics

Abstract: Wide field-of-view (FOV) optics are widely deployed in imaging and sensing applications spanning consumer electronics, automotive sensing, security surveillance, photography and cinematography, medical imaging, and more. Conventional wide-FOV optics involve multiple cascaded glass lenses resulting in major size, weight and cost limitations. Metasurface optics using sub-wavelength structures for light manipulation provide a promising alternative for wide-FOV optics. In this talk, I will start by presenting an analytical design framework for wide-FOV metasurface optics, followed by discussing their experimental demonstrations in broad wave bands from visible to long-wave IR. I will show that the wide-FOV architecture can be further extended to introduce novel functionalities such as parfocal zoom and large depth-of-field imaging. Finally, I will discuss new applications of wide-FOV metasurface optics in 3-D sensing and projection display.

Bio: Prof. Juejun (JJ) Hu is currently the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. His research primarily focuses on integrated optics and photonics. Prof. Hu has authored and coauthored more than 150 refereed journal publications, and he has been recognized with the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, the Robert L. Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society, the Vittorio Gottardi Prize from the International Commission on Glass, the NSF CAREER award, and the DARPA Young Faculty Award, among others. Hu is a fellow of Optica, SPIE, and the American Ceramic Society. He is also the co-founder of 2Pi Inc., an MIT spin-off focusing on metasurface optics, as well as two other start-ups on emerging photonics technologies.