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Metasurface-enabled single-shot and complete Mueller matrix imaging

Nature Photonics (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

When light scatters off an object, its polarization, in general, changes—a transformation described by the object’s Mueller matrix. Mueller matrix imaging is an important technique in science and technology to image the spatially varying polarization response of an object of interest, to reveal rich information otherwise invisible to traditional imaging. Here we conceptualize, implement and demonstrate a compact Mueller matrix imaging system—composed of a metasurface to produce structured polarization illumination and a metasurface for polarization analysis—that can, in a single shot, acquire all 16 components of an object’s spatially varying Mueller matrix over an image. Our implementation, which is free of any moving parts or bulk polarization optics, should enable and empower applications in real-time medical imaging, material characterization, machine vision, target detection and other important areas.

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Fig. 1: Conventional polarization optics versus metasurfaces.
Fig. 2: Concept of single-shot and complete MM imaging.
Fig. 3: Experimental implementation.
Fig. 4: MM imaging results for transmission.
Fig. 5: MM imaging results for reflection.

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All data are available in the paper or Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under grant number FA9550-21-1-0312 (F.C.), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under grant number N00014-20-1-2450 (F.C.) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under grant numbers 80NSSC21K0799 (F.C.) and 80NSSC20K0318 (F.C.). This work was performed in part at the Harvard University Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS): a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF award number ECCS-2025158.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Aun Zaidi, Noah A. Rubin, Maryna L. Meretska, Lisa W. Li, Ahmed H. Dorrah, Joon-Suh Park & Federico Capasso

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA

    Noah A. Rubin

  3. Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Maryna L. Meretska

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Contributions

A.Z. conceived the idea and developed the theory with inputs from N.A.R. and F.C. A.Z. designed and optimized the metasurfaces. M.L.M. and N.A.R. fabricated the metasurfaces with assistance from J.-S.P. N.A.R. and L.W.L. performed full-Stokes imaging calibration. A.Z. performed the experiments with assistance from A.H.D. A.Z. analysed the data. F.C. supervised the project. All authors contributed to the writing of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Aun Zaidi or Federico Capasso.

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Nature Photonics thanks Davide Pierangeli and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 SEM Images of Metasurfaces.

(A) SEM images of the (aperiodic) metasurface hologram - Metasurface 1 - used to produce structured polarization illumination. (B) SEM images of the (periodic) metasurface diffraction grating - Metasurface 2 - used for full-Stokes imaging. (Scale bar: 1 μm).

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–15 and Discussion.

Supplementary Video

Video (real-time imaging) of a rotating linear polarizer. The ‘pauses’ in between are due to the experimenter resetting their fingers on the dial of the polarizer. From 35 s onwards, the experimenter is removing the linear polarizer; at the end, we see the identity MM of air.

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Zaidi, A., Rubin, N.A., Meretska, M.L. et al. Metasurface-enabled single-shot and complete Mueller matrix imaging. Nat. Photon. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01426-x

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