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The human eye can see the color and the direction of light, but one property that we cannot see is polarization, or the direction in which the light wave oscillates (up/down, left/right or a combination of those). Now, researchers at the Riccio College of Engineering at UMass Amherst are partnering with Myrias Optics, a startup founded by James Watkins, professor of polymer science and engineering, to develop a new type of lens that would make this information visible—and do so at a commercial scale. 

“The world is going to look different when you look through a polarization-controlled lens compared to a normal one, so we’ll see what kind of new applications show up,” says Amir Arbabi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher on the UMass Amherst portion of the research.

Arbabi’s lab has been awarded about $465,000 out of a $1.55 million grant awarded to Myrias Optics by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to design these lenses called polarization-controlled metasurfaces. Vincent Einck, co-founder and chief technology officer of Myrias Optics, earned his undergraduate degree at UMass and completed his Ph.D. in Watkins’ lab.

“Think about the reflection off of water,” says Einck. “You use polarized sunglasses to cut out that glare. That is essentially the simplest version of a polarization-selective surface.” He explains that current polarization-sensitive optics work by filtering out one polarization. “But if you have two different polarizations, you end up with half the power and half the information.” Instead, the lenses UMass Amherst and Myrias Optics are developing will distinguish between different polarizations so that they can capture all the data. 

Arbabi’s lab will design the nanostructure that enables the metasurface to separate polarizations rather than filter them. Einck’s team at Myrias Optics will then take this template and apply it to their proprietary manufacturing platform to establish a scalable production process to make it feasible to commercialize these metasurfaces for cameras, sensors, microscopes and other mass-market optical equipment. 

Arbabi compares the use of polarization to color. “There is information in color,” he says, “You can look at a scene and the color has a lot of information versus black and white. We expect polarization to also add a significant amount of data.” And with that data comes a wide range of applications. 

For instance, polarization changes based on internal stress, so these lenses could be used as part of industrial inspection processes of machine components. Medical research and diagnostics are other areas of opportunity. In the same way that biomedical imaging uses specific dyes to create contrast, polarization data could provide another layer of information. As a hypothetical example, one bacterium may look different than others when viewed through a polarization-controlled microscope. Machine vision, security and defense and telecom/datacom are other fields that could potentially see advances.

In addition to these foreseeable applications, Arbabi and Einck are excited for the yet-to-be-discovered uses that come through mass commercialization. 

“Imagine we as a species could not see color,” says Arbabi. “If somebody talked about seeing color to you, you would have no idea what that means, and you could not even think about what kind of applications you’re going to have with a color camera.” By putting the cameras into the hands of people that let them access this new property of light, suddenly new uses will appear, he added.  

“If you have an iPhone, you have all these sliders for contrast and saturation and brightness and sharpness,” says Einck. “If you have one with a polarization slider where you can adjust it and see what happens, I think there’s a lot of new, creative things that will come out of the woodwork there.”