Physics colloquium – “Flat Optics”

Nanfang Yu

Columbia University

Abstract: In this talk, I will share with the audience recent and on-going work in my lab on metasurfaces and biophotonics. Metasurfaces utilize strong interactions between light and nanostructured thin films to control light with subwavelength precision. I will describe how we use metasurface as a technology platform to innovate free-space optics, integrated photonics, and neuromorphic computing, with examples including holographic metasurfaces for trapping ultracold atoms, mm-wave flat-knit metasurface reflect-arrays, leaky-wave metasurfaces for interconnecting integrated and free-space optics, and metasurface-based neural networks for facial verification. I will also describe on-going work on characterizing and understanding the color and polarization vision of living butterflies.

Short-Bio: Nanfang Yu is an Associate Professor of Applied Physics at the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University. His lab conducts experimental research on metasurfaces, integrated photonics, and biophotonics. Yu was previously a Research Associate in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University from 2009 to 2012. He received the Ph.D. degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University in 2009, and the B.S. degree from the Department of Electronics at Peking University, Beijing, China, in 2004. Yu is the recipient of 2023 Moore Foundation Experimental Physics Investigators Award, 2022 OPTICA Fellow, 2017 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director’s Fellowship, 2016 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, and 2015 DARPA Young Faculty Award.

All lectures held in CTLM102 unless otherwise specified