Optical switches are core devices for dynamic optical modulation and an important foundation for optical communication systems and optical computing architectures. Traditional optical switches mostly rely on electrical or mechanical modulation, with response times typically limited to the nanosecond to millisecond range—making it difficult to meet the demand for ultrafast response in high-speed communications and optical computing. Although all-optical driving can push response times down to the picosecond scale, existing all-optical switches based on resonant nanostructures generally lack output wavefront control capability. Optical metasurfaces can flexibly modulate the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light in a pixelated manner, but conventional non-resonant or Mie-type metasurfaces have relatively broad response bandwidths, and photoinduced refractive index changes are insufficient to achieve effective switching modulation. Although nonlocal metasurfaces possess high quality factors (Q factors) and narrow linewidths and can combine geometric phase to achieve pixelated phase control, further research is still needed.
