A full degree-of-freedom spatiotemporal light modulator

Harnessing the full complexity of optical fields requires the complete control of all degrees of freedom within a region of space and time—an open goal for present-day spatial light modulators, active metasurfaces and optical phased arrays. Here, we resolve this challenge with a 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 by optimized 300 mm full-wafer processing; (3) picometre-precision resonance alignment using automated, closed-loop ‘holographic trimming’; and (4) out-of-plane cavity control via a high-speed μLED array. Combining each, we demonstrate the near-complete spatiotemporal control of a 64 resonator, two-dimensional spatial light modulator with nanosecond- and femtojoule-order switching. Simultaneously operating wavelength-scale modes near the space–bandwidth and time–bandwidth limits, this work opens a new regime of programmability at the fundamental limits of multimode optical control.