metasurface

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  • Second Bay Studio/Harvard SEAS

    Corkscrew light beams could lead to practical quantum computers

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    11.05.2017

    Who said light only had to travel in boring waves or particles? Not Harvard. Its researchers have found a way to spin light into complex states that promise breakthroughs in multiple fields. They've built metasurfaces whose elaborate optics combine two kinds of light momentum (orbital angular and spin angular) to send light into corkscrews, spirals or even fork-like shapes. If you want to change the light state, you just need to change the polarization of that light.