Dynamic light manipulation with atomically thin quantum metasurfaces

In the field of optics, we are used to direct light waves with bulky optical components. The development of metasurfaces has recently brought many exciting new ways to manipulate the flow of light. These are essentially flat optical elements comprised of a dense arrays of nanostructures that can scatter light and thereby impart space-varying phases on an incident light wave. The ultimate physical limitations of these optical components can be traced back to the properties of the materials and building blocks that they are constructed from. Current metasurface designs largely employ metallic or high-index nanostructures. They afford strong scattering because of their plasmonic and Mie resonances that enable them to serve as optical antennas. However, emerging metasurface applications in quantum optical communications, augmented reality, non-linear optics, and spatiotemporal light control demand much more than the basic, linear, and typically-static scattering responses provided by such geometrically-shaped antennas. In this presentation, I will ask the question whether the unique quantum properties of atomically-thin quantum can be harnessed to create atomically-thin metasurfaces.