In the past decade, our capabilities for molding the flow of light have seen monumental growth due to advances in nanofabrication tools and techniques. These advances have enabled the development of three-dimensional (3D) composite structures with electromagnetic properties at will. Such materials, also known as metamaterials, have led to a number of intriguing phenomena, such as negative refraction, sub-diffraction-limited imaging, etc. [1]. However, 3D metamaterials suffer from low efficiency due to high optical losses, a drawback that has limited their use for quantum optical applications.
Recent studies have shown that planar photonic metamaterials provide a higher degree of freedom in shaping optical wavefronts by imparting local phase changes. These planar metamaterials, also known as metasurfaces, have thus attracted great interest [2,3]. However, to date, application-oriented research in this field has primarily focused on classical light, where the average number of photons is very large. Previously, we have proposed and developed a metasurface platform which shows the promise of metasurface for single-photon applications [4-6]. However, the potential of single-photon applications using a judiciously designed metasurfaces is far from being fully explored [7-11].
In this research, our initial focus is directed towards addressing this open question by quantifying the optical responses of metasurfaces using single-photon imaging techniques. We will develop metasurfaces that can be used at the level of single photons and manipulate quantum states of light for on-chip quantum sensing, quantum imaging, and quantum information processing applications.
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