Thermal Holography with Nonlocal Metasurfaces
Abstract
Thermal radiation and luminescence are among the most ubiquitous sources of light, yet their properties are difficult to engineer due to their incoherent nature. Recent advances in thermal emission control have endowed heat-generated light with spatial and temporal coherence, as well as control over its polarization, by judiciously patterning periodic arrays of nanostructures. However, custom wavefront engineering of incoherent light has remained an open challenge, as it requires not only sufficient spatial and temporal coherence but also arbitrary local phase control, which experimentally translates into sustaining long-range lattice resonances in aperiodic systems while maintaining their robustness against local phase perturbations. In this work, we address this longstanding limitation and demonstrate programmable vectorial control over the thermal emission wavefront from single-layer aperiodic nonlocal metasurfaces, realized by manipulating local geometric phases across a collective delocalized resonance. We exemplify the wavefront-shaping capabilities of our approach by demonstrating thermal beam steering, spin-momentum-locked thermal focusing and the generation of a thermal vectorial hologram, providing custom spatial and spectral control over thermal light. Our platform addresses challenges in thermal emission engineering and provides a route for light generation and control without the need for external coherent sources or bulky setups. Future work may extend this design principle to other incoherent emission systems, such as photo- and electroluminescence.
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BibTeX
@misc{he2026thermal,
title = {{Thermal Holography with Nonlocal Metasurfaces}},
author = {Mingze He and Lin Jing and Michele Guizzardi and Shixiong Yin and Martina Riva and Yajun Gao and Shuwei Guo and Adam C. Overvig and Sander A. Mann and Andrea Alù},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.10287},
eprint = {2610.10287},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10287},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Thermal Holography with Nonlocal Metasurfaces
AU - Mingze He
AU - Lin Jing
AU - Michele Guizzardi
AU - Shixiong Yin
AU - Martina Riva
AU - Yajun Gao
AU - Shuwei Guo
AU - Adam C. Overvig
AU - Sander A. Mann
AU - Andrea Alù
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.10287
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10287
AB - Thermal radiation and luminescence are among the most ubiquitous sources of light, yet their properties are difficult to engineer due to their incoherent nature. Recent advances in thermal emission control have endowed heat-generated light with spatial and temporal coherence, as well as control over its polarization, by judiciously patterning periodic arrays of nanostructures. However, custom wavefront engineering of incoherent light has remained an open challenge, as it requires not only sufficient spatial and temporal coherence but also arbitrary local phase control, which experimentally translates into sustaining long-range lattice resonances in aperiodic systems while maintaining their robustness against local phase perturbations. In this work, we address this longstanding limitation and demonstrate programmable vectorial control over the thermal emission wavefront from single-layer aperiodic nonlocal metasurfaces, realized by manipulating local geometric phases across a collective delocalized resonance. We exemplify the wavefront-shaping capabilities of our approach by demonstrating thermal beam steering, spin-momentum-locked thermal focusing and the generation of a thermal vectorial hologram, providing custom spatial and spectral control over thermal light. Our platform addresses challenges in thermal emission engineering and provides a route for light generation and control without the need for external coherent sources or bulky setups. Future work may extend this design principle to other incoherent emission systems, such as photo- and electroluminescence.
ER -