Abstract
Conventional coherent light-field manipulation techniques inherently conflict with the spatiotemporal incoherence of thermal radiation sources. While recent advances in thermophotonics have facilitated directional thermal emission, arbitrary thermal wavefront control—a cornerstone for advanced functionalities like focusing and holography—remains an unaddressed challenge. Here, we report a generalized recipe of designing meta-emitters with lossy and lossless outer boundaries, that enables thermal emission with arbitrarily tailored wavefront. Lossy and lossless surfaces on two sides of the meta-emitter are synergistically coupled by a single-mode waveguide, transforming incoherent thermal photons to coherent surface waves for wavefront shaping functionalities. Designer surface mode of meta-emitter permits the independent optimization of photon lifetime and propagation length, thus enabling scalable spatial coherence engineering. For the proof of concept, we experimentally demonstrate near-diffraction-limited self-focusing emission, quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) high-quality thermal holography without speckle noise and spatial-multiplexed holography. Coupling optimization further suggests that spatial coherence exceeding 1000λ0 are achievable. Our proposed meta-emitter establishes a paradigm-shifting framework to integrate stochastic thermodynamic emission with precision photonic engineering, opening avenues for information-rich thermal radiation technologies.
Data availability
All the data in this study are provided within the paper and its supplementary information.
Code availability
All the code that supports the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
M.-Y.G. acknowledged the financial support by the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U24A20313), National Natural Science Foundation of China (62475234 and 62075196), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2024YFA1012600), Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province LDT23F05014F05, Leading Innovative and Entrepreneur Team Introduction Program of Zhejiang (2021R01001) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (2021FZZX001-07). C.R. acknowledged the financial support by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62405268) and Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (GZC20232261). C.-W.Q. acknowledged the financial support by the Ministry of Education, Republic of Singapore (Grant No.: A-8002978-00-00, A-8002152-00-00 and A-8002458-00-00), the National Research Foundation, Singapore (NRF) under NRFs Medium Sized Centre: Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation-Electronics (SHINE) Centre funding programme, and the Science and Technology Project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BZ2022056). J. B. X. acknowledged the support from AoE/P-701/20.
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M.-Y.G. conceived the idea. C.-R., C.-T.L., Y.-ZJ, Z.-S., F. R., D.-H.G. and D.-Y.D. performed the experiments. C.-R. conducted all the calculations and simulations. C.-R., L.-M.Q., C.-W.Q., and M.-Y.G. analyzed the data and prepared the manuscript with assistance from L.-X.S. The project is supervised by H.-H., X.-J.B., M.-Y.G., and C.-W.Q. All the authors contributed to the manuscript revision.
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Chen, R., Chen, T., Liu, M. et al. Ultra-coherent meta-emitter tailors arbitrary thermal wavefront. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69088-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69088-7
