This diagram was created for a paper figure for Ting Xu, then at Nanjing University, and Amit Agrawal at NIST. The figure needed to explain how a metasurface modifies the orbital angular momentum of a light pulse.

The input pulse is dispersed into separate colors. Each color interacts with a different region of the metasurface, changing its orbital angular momentum before the colors are recombined into the shaped output pulse.

I redrew the researchers' original figure into a clearer explanatory diagram. I added more colored beams, changed the angle and density of the nanopillars, and adjusted transparency so the metasurface stayed visible without hiding the beams behind it.

With guidance from the researchers, I also added shaped input and output pulses, blended the rainbow beam at the points of dispersion and recombination, and adjusted the color and contrast so the main parts were easier to see.