Precise sculpturing of light empowers light with abundant phenomena across fundamental physics and practical applications. The emergence of metasurfaces provides a pivotal solution to the limitations of traditional optical components, which make it difficult to meet the integration requirements of diverse applications, and they are distinguished by their ultra-thin profiles, low optical losses, and high degree of controllability. In this paper, we elucidate the core physical principles to manipulate phase, amplitude, and polarization with meta-optic architecture, along with nonlocal effects. Specifically, we revisit the research progress and typical applications of meta-waveguides, meta-fibers, meta-lasers, meta-spectrometers, and meta-sensing. Finally, it looks forward to the future development direction of meta-optics in exploring the limits of light field control, chip-scale functional integration, and discovering new physical effects, providing theoretical and technical references for the development of metaphotonic devices.
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.