Incandescent light bulbs and other thermal radiation sources can produce coherent, polarized and directed emissions with the help of a structured thin film known as a metasurface. Created by Andrea Alù and colleagues at the City University of New York (CUNY), US, the new metasurface uses a periodic structure with tailored local perturbations to transform ordinary thermal emissions into something more like a laser beam – an achievement heralded as “just the beginning” for thermal radiation control.
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