Ultrawide-angle diffraction-limited 2D beam steering via hybrid integrated metasurface-photonic circuit
Ultrawide-angle diffraction-limited 2D beam steering via hybrid integrated metasurface-photonic circuit
超広角回折制限のための2次元ビーム制御をハイブリッド集積超表面光子回路により実現
하이브리드 통합 메타 표면-광자 회로를 통해 초광각 회전 제한된 2D 하하하이브리드 통합 메타 표면-광자 회로를 통해
Dirección de haz 2D limitada por difracción de ángulo ultraamplio a través de circuito metasuperficie-fotónico integrado híbrido
Direction du faisceau 2D à diffraction limitée à ultragrand angle via un circuit intégré hybride métasurface-photonique
Ультраширокоугольное ограниченное дифракционное управление 2D лучем через гибридную интегрированную метаповерхностно-фотонную схему
Zhiping He ¹ ², Luigi Ranno ¹, Padraic Burns ³, Fan Yang ³, Hung-I Lin ¹ ³, Maarten R.A. Peters ¹, Hanyu Zheng ³, Rui Chen ⁴, Yi Ji Tan ⁴, Chuanyu Lian ⁵, Nathan Dostart ⁶, Hyun Jung Kim ⁷, Carlos Ríos ⁵, Tian Gu ¹ ³, Juejun Hu ¹ ³ ⁴
¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
² Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
³ 2Pi Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
⁴ Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), Singapore 138602, Singapore
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
⁶ NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 23681, USA
⁷ Department of Aerospace Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, Republic of Korea
Two-dimensional (2D) wide field-of-view (FOV) beam steering is a key enabling capability for emerging free-space optical systems, including inter-satellite optical links, airborne LiDAR, point-to-point optical wireless communications, and collaborative robotic platforms. These applications require rapid acquisition and tracking across both azimuth and elevation; architectures that offer wide scanning in only one dimension while maintaining limited coverage in the orthogonal direction constrain link availability, coverage uniformity, and system agility.
Here, we demonstrate a chip-scale platform for ultrawide-angle, diffraction-limited 2D beam steering based on hybrid integration of a silicon photonic integrated circuit (PIC) and an optical metasurface. A free-form micro-optical reflector efficiently transforms the guided waveguide mode into an expanded free-space beam that illuminates an analytically optimized ultrawide-FOV metasurface. The integrated system achieves a measured FOV exceeding 160° while maintaining diffraction-limited beam quality over a broad angular range at telecom wavelengths.
This hybrid PIC-metasurface architecture provides a compact and scalable route to high-quality 2D beam steering and establishes a practical pathway toward integrated optical projectors for space-based optical communications and other applications requiring agile, wide-angle, high-fidelity beam control.
