Multicolor holography can faithfully record the color, depth, parallax, and other properties of scenes and have thus found numerous applications, for example, in optical document security, nonvolatile data storage, and virtual or augmented reality systems. Nanophotonic metasurfaces present multiple degrees of freedom to manipulate the properties of optical fields at visible wavelengths. These in turn provide opportunities for metasurface-based multicolor holography. We describe recent developments in multicolor metasurface holograms. These are categorized based on their color-separating mechanisms rather than their structural properties, such as whether they are plasmonic or dielectric. We hope this review will provide readers with new insights and thus help extend applications of metasurface-based multicolor holography to other fields.

Integrated photonics is attracting considerable attention and has found many applications in both classical and quantum optics, fulfilling the requirements for the ever-growing complexity in modern optical experiments and big data communication. Femtosecond (fs) laser direct writing (FLDW) is an acknowledged technique for producing waveguides (WGs) in transparent glass that have been used to construct complex integrated photonic devices. FLDW possesses unique features, such as three-dimensional fabrication geometry, rapid prototyping, and single step fabrication, which are important for integrated communication devices and quantum photonic and astrophotonic technologies. To fully take advantage of FLDW, considerable efforts have been made to produce WGs over a large depth with low propagation loss, coupling loss, bend loss, and highly symmetrical mode field. We summarize the improved techniques as well as the mechanisms for writing high-performance WGs with controllable morphology of cross-section, highly symmetrical mode field, low loss, and high processing uniformity and efficiency, and discuss the recent progress of WGs in photonic integrated devices for communication, topological physics, quantum information processing, and astrophotonics. Prospective challenges and future research directions in this field are also pointed out.

Optical links are moving to higher and higher transmission speeds while shrinking to shorter and shorter ranges where optical links are envisaged even at the chip scale. The scaling in data speed and span of the optical links demands modulators to be concurrently performant and cost-effective. Silicon photonics (SiPh), a photonic integrated circuit technology that leverages the fabrication sophistication of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology, is well-positioned to deliver the performance, price, and manufacturing volume for the high-speed modulators of future optical communication links. SiPh has relied on the plasma dispersion effect, either in injection, depletion, or accumulation mode, to demonstrate efficient high-speed modulators. The high-speed plasma dispersion silicon modulators have been commercially deployed and have demonstrated excellent performance. Recent years have seen a paradigm shift where the integration of various electro-refractive and electro-absorptive materials has opened up additional routes toward performant SiPh modulators. These modulators are in the early years of their development. They promise to extend the performance beyond the limits set by the physical properties of silicon. The focus of our study is to provide a comprehensive review of contemporary (i.e., plasma dispersion modulators) and new modulator implementations that involve the integration of novel materials with SiPh.

Abbe’s resolution limit, one of the best-known physical limitations, poses a great challenge for any wave system in imaging, wave transport, and dynamics. Originally formulated in linear optics, the Abbe limit can be broken using nonlinear optical interactions. We extend the Abbe theory into a nonlinear regime and experimentally demonstrate a far-field, label-free, and scan-free super-resolution imaging technique based on nonlinear four-wave mixing to retrieve near-field scattered evanescent waves, achieving a sub-wavelength resolution of λ / 5.6. This method paves the way for numerous new applications in biomedical imaging, semiconductor metrology, and photolithography.

Glide symmetry, which is one kind of higher symmetry, is introduced in a special type of plasmonic metamaterial, the transmission lines (TLs) of spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs), in order to control the dispersion characteristics and modal fields of the SSPPs. We show that the glide-symmetric TL presents merged pass bands and mode degeneracy, which lead to broad working bandwidth and extremely low coupling between neighboring TLs. Dual-conductor SSPP TLs with and without glide symmetry are arranged in parallel as two channels with very deep subwavelength separation (e.g., λ₀ / 100 at 5 GHz) for the application of integrated circuits and systems. Mutual coupling between the hybrid channels is analyzed using coupled mode theory and characterized in terms of scattering parameters and near-field distributions. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that the hybrid TL array obtains significantly more suppressed crosstalk than the uniform array of two nonglide symmetric TLs. Hence, it is concluded that the glide symmetry can be adopted to flexibly design the propagation of SSPPs and benefit the development of highly compact plasmonic circuits.

Fano resonances are conventionally understood as sharp spectral features with selectivity in the momentum-frequency domain, implying that they can be excited only by plane waves with specific frequencies and incident angles. We demonstrate that Fano resonances can be made generally selective in the space-frequency domain. They can be tailored to resonate only when excited by a frequency, polarization, and wavefront of choice. This generalization reveals that Fano systems are characterized by eigenwaves that scatter to their time-reversed image upon reflection. Although in conventional Fano systems this trivially occurs for normally incident plane waves, we show that, in general, the selected wavefront is locally retroreflected everywhere across the device. These results show that conventional Fano resonances are a subset of a broader dichroic phenomenon with spin, spatial, and spectral selectivity. We demonstrate these concepts with nonlocal metasurfaces whose governing principles are deeply rooted in the symmetry features of quasi-bound states in the continuum. Enhanced light–matter interactions and symmetry-protection make these phenomena uniquely suited for enriching applications in quantum optics, non-linear optics, augmented reality, and secure optical communications, laying the groundwork for a range of novel compact optical sources and devices.

Radiation at terahertz frequencies can be used to analyze the structural dynamics of water and biomolecules, but applying the technique to aqueous solutions and tissues remains challenging since terahertz radiation is strongly absorbed by water. While this absorption enables certain analyses, such as the structure of water and its interactions with biological solutes, it limits the thickness of samples that can be analyzed, and it drowns out weaker signals from biomolecules of interest. We present a method for analyzing water-rich samples via time-domain terahertz optoacoustics over a 10⁴-fold thickness ranging from microns to centimeters. We demonstrate that adjusting the temperature to alter the terahertz optoacoustic (THz-OA) signal of water improves the sensitivity with which it can be analyzed and, conversely, can reduce or even “silence” its signal. Temperature-manipulated THz-OA signals of aqueous solutions allow detection of solutes such as ions with an order of magnitude greater sensitivity than terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, and potentially provide more characteristic parameters related to both terahertz absorption and ultrasonic propagation. Terahertz optoacoustics may be a powerful tool for spectroscopy and potential imaging of aqueous solutions and tissues to explore molecular interactions and biochemical processes.

Histopathology relies upon the staining and sectioning of biological tissues, which can be laborious and may cause artifacts and distort tissues. We develop label-free volumetric imaging of thick-tissue slides, exploiting refractive index distributions as intrinsic imaging contrast. The present method systematically exploits label-free quantitative phase imaging techniques, volumetric reconstruction of intrinsic refractive index distributions in tissues, and numerical algorithms for the seamless stitching of multiple three-dimensional tomograms and for reducing scattering-induced image distortion. We demonstrated label-free volumetric imaging of thick tissues with the field of view of 2 mm × 1.75 mm × 0.2 mm with a spatial resolution of 170 nm × 170 nm × 1400 nm. The number of optical modes, calculated as the reconstructed volume divided by the size of the point spread function, was ～20 giga voxels. We have also demonstrated that different tumor types and a variety of precursor lesions and pathologies can be visualized with the present method.