Sculpting light for better imaging and communications

Lenses, mirrors and prisms have made eyeglasses, microscopes and telescopes possible. But these staples of classic optics may have reached the limit of their capabilities, much like traditional wired telephones. Enter vector optics — the next phase of light technology.

“With many optical systems approaching their engineering limits, the next few years should see a transition from the scalar era to the vector era,” says optics expert, Mingbo Pu, at the Institute of Optics and Electronics (IOE), Chinese Academy of Sciences in Chengdu.

Vector optics typically use ultra-thin engineered mirrors or planar ‘metalenses’ composed of billions of nanostructures, each designed to alter the vector properties of light — the direction of its electric field across different spatial distributions — as it passes through.

That opens a plethora of new ways to ‘structure’ light compared to classic optics, where scalar properties such as intensity and phase must be manipulated one at a time with bulky equipment.

Pu leads a team at the State Key Laboratory of Optical Field Manipulation Science and Technology at IOE, which is already leveraging vector light fields for short-range applications. These include continuously tuneable vector lasers with superior focusing; and optical force tweezers, that use a vortex light beam to trap and manipulate atom-sized particles.

Disruptive role

In the future, vector optics “will play a disruptive role in long-range and strong-field scenarios including laser energy transmission, telescope imaging and space communication,” he predicts. The team is also developing vector optics for intelligent optical systems with artificial intelligence and the high-power lasers of the future.

In pursuit of a larger, lighter and more robust camera for telescopes, several research institutes in China, including the IOE, are working on the Large-Aperture Thin-Film Optical System. To date, a 300 mm flat lens has been tested in a camera in orbit, while a much larger 1.5-metre metalens camera has been prototyped on the ground.

Meanwhile, researchers at NASA in the United States are developing the Metalens Origami Deployable LiDAR Telescope (MODeL-T) intended for high-resolution monitoring of the Earth’s surface from space.

One key challenge for space-based LiDAR is that its light signals weaken dramatically over long distances. MODeL-T addresses this by having a 1.8-metre ‘origami’ lens made up of 50 wafer-thin segments that will unfold once it reaches orbit. Fully assembled, this giant aperture will enable both emission and ultra-sensitive detection of different types of polarized laser.

Pu’s team has demonstrated sub-diffraction-limited single-photon LiDAR, allowing ultra-sensitive detection of details smaller than the conventional optical limit.

Unlimited freedom

To optimize the use of laser in communications, Pu’s team has added ‘orbital angular momentum’ (OAM) to the mix in a prototype, showing that OAM can enhance both the capacity and security of free-space optical communication¹.

Whereas circular polarization, which specifically refers to the spin of photons, has two degrees of freedom — clockwise and counterclockwise — OAM measures the twist of light wavefronts and in theory has unlimited degrees of freedom. Combined, they can squeeze several times as much data into a single laser.

To stimulate further development of vector light applications, IOE has established a suite of dedicated research platforms. The Imaging Platform is exploring the advantages of polarized light for remote high-resolution and sub-diffraction limited imaging.

Meanwhile, the Vector Light Field Space Communication Research Platform focuses on developing lasers for secure, high-volume communication between satellites, aircraft and ground stations. Compared to using radio for communication, laser is vastly more difficult to jam. By using structured light to encode data in multiple dimensions — enabled by a metasurface-based multiplexing technique originally developed for expanding information channels in holograms — these systems can increase both capacity and security².

Looking to the future, highly structured light beams might one day replace the electrical connections in neural networks, or be used to shuttle data around quantum networks, with individual photons forming the qubits of quantum computers.

While these possibilities are still theoretical, in 2017, a team in China, which included IOE researchers, used the polarization of photons to encode quantum encryption keys before distributing them via secure satellite — marking a milestone in quantum communication³.

Intelligent optics

The fading of signals over distance is just one of the challenges facing optical digital communication. Another is signal disruption caused by atmospheric turbulence and other harsh environments. In 2025, the IOE’s director Xiangang Luo proposed a potential solution: an Optical Intelligent Agent (OIA), which integrates optical sensing, processing, and autonomous decision-making capabilities by using digital optics technologies and AI large models⁴.

Pu’s team has since developed OIAs that can see around corners in unprecedented detail. The non-line-of-sight system sends a finely structured light field to a relay surface, which reflects light from the hidden object and from the emitter back to the sensor.

“By measuring the returned signal across phase, amplitude, and polarization dimensions — and using AI-informed inverse models, we can reconstruct hidden scenes with fidelity that was previously impossible,” says Pu. “This has shifted non-line-of-sight imaging from a proof-of-concept toward robust, real-world applications in sensing and autonomy.”