All-Optical Control over Nonlocality for Ultrafast Image Processing with an Excitonic Metasurface
Abstract
Image processing lies at the foundation of many modern technologies, such as augmented reality and autonomous driving, yet conventional digital approaches remain energy-intensive and limited in speed. Nonlocal metasurfaces - 2D structures engineered at the nanoscale to support delocalized, dispersion engineered resonances - provide a fast, energy-efficient and ultrathin platform to perform image processing directly on the light path. Introducing tunability in this platform is an outstanding challenge, and would enable dynamic real-time control over the implemented processing operation, facilitating flexible integration into adaptive and multifunctional photonic architectures. Here, we demonstrate optically tunable edge detection at ultrafast speeds by integrating a dielectric nonlocal metasurface with multilayer WS2, whose strong exciton-driven optical response enables dynamic control of the metasurface nonlocality at sub-ps speeds. Using resonant optical pumping of the A-exciton in WS2, the metasurface transfer function is rapidly switched from edge detection to bright-field imaging by tuning its spatial nonlocality. Operating in the visible spectral range at a wavelength around 700 nm, the device shows ultrafast switching times and reaches an amplitude modulation depth of 11.5 dB for normal incident light. This approach provides a reconfigurable, ultrathin, all-optical platform for adaptive optical computing systems and highlights the potential of the highly nonlinear properties of 2D materials for active metasurfaces at ultrafast speeds.
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BibTeX
@misc{dias2026alloptical,
title = {{All-Optical Control over Nonlocality for Ultrafast Image Processing with an Excitonic Metasurface}},
author = {Bernardo S. Dias and Romain Tirole and Michele Guizzardi and Andrea Cordaro and Albert Polman and Andrea Alù and Jorik van de Groep},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.22006},
eprint = {2609.22006},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22006},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - All-Optical Control over Nonlocality for Ultrafast Image Processing with an Excitonic Metasurface
AU - Bernardo S. Dias
AU - Romain Tirole
AU - Michele Guizzardi
AU - Andrea Cordaro
AU - Albert Polman
AU - Andrea Alù
AU - Jorik van de Groep
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.22006
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.22006
AB - Image processing lies at the foundation of many modern technologies, such as augmented reality and autonomous driving, yet conventional digital approaches remain energy-intensive and limited in speed. Nonlocal metasurfaces - 2D structures engineered at the nanoscale to support delocalized, dispersion engineered resonances - provide a fast, energy-efficient and ultrathin platform to perform image processing directly on the light path. Introducing tunability in this platform is an outstanding challenge, and would enable dynamic real-time control over the implemented processing operation, facilitating flexible integration into adaptive and multifunctional photonic architectures. Here, we demonstrate optically tunable edge detection at ultrafast speeds by integrating a dielectric nonlocal metasurface with multilayer WS2, whose strong exciton-driven optical response enables dynamic control of the metasurface nonlocality at sub-ps speeds. Using resonant optical pumping of the A-exciton in WS2, the metasurface transfer function is rapidly switched from edge detection to bright-field imaging by tuning its spatial nonlocality. Operating in the visible spectral range at a wavelength around 700 nm, the device shows ultrafast switching times and reaches an amplitude modulation depth of 11.5 dB for normal incident light. This approach provides a reconfigurable, ultrathin, all-optical platform for adaptive optical computing systems and highlights the potential of the highly nonlinear properties of 2D materials for active metasurfaces at ultrafast speeds.
ER -