A full degree-of-freedom spatiotemporal light modulator

Harnessing the full complexity of optical fields requires complete control all degrees freedom within a region space and time—an open goal for present-day spatial light modulators, active metasurfaces phased arrays. Here, we resolve this challenge with programmable photonic crystal cavity array enabled by four key advances: (1) near-unity vertical coupling to high-finesse microcavities through inverse design; (2) scalable fabrication optimized 300 mm full-wafer processing; (3) picometre-precision resonance alignment using automated, closed-loop ‘holographic trimming’; (4) out-of-plane via high-speed ?LED array. Combining each, demonstrate near-complete spatiotemporal 64 resonator, two-dimensional modulator nanosecond- femtojoule-order switching. Simultaneously operating wavelength-scale modes near space–bandwidth time–bandwidth limits, work opens new regime programmability at fundamental limits multimode control. Panuski et al. array, enabling