optique

The word “lens” takes its name from the Latin word for lentil. Both are both hemispheric shapes bound together on their flat surface. So a “flat lens” sounds like a contradiction of terms. Yet that is exactly what Andrei Faraon is working on at California Institute of Technology’s Nanoscale and Quantum Optics Lab.

Computers process information based on arrays of so-called bits. Each bit can take the values of one or zero. This is typically realized with integrated electronic circuits permanently written onto a semiconductor chip.