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Sorting complex light beams: A breakthrough in optical physics - EurekAlert


Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology have developed a compact metasurface capable of continuously sorting and detecting arbitrary vector structured beams (VSBs). Unlike conventional light beams, VSBs exhibit complex spatial and polarization configurations, making them versatile for data encoding. The proposed device deploys layers of spin-multiplexed diffractive metasurfaces as networked neurons to simultaneously identify various VSB modes—such as Laguerre–Gaussian, Hermitian–Gaussian, and Bessel–Gaussian. This breakthrough opens new possibilities for high-dimensional optical communication systems and quantum computing.

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