Scientists made a paper-thin lens that can hold 4,000 different pictures; you just swap the color of the light to flip through them like a slideshow.
April 6, 2026
Original Paper
Wavelength-multiplexed massively parallel diffractive optical information storage and image projection
arXiv · 2604.02624
The Takeaway
By assigning each picture to a specific wavelength of light, researchers created a passive surface that acts like a massive library of images. It is like having a slide projector with thousands of slides but no moving parts—only the color of the bulb changes.
From the abstract
We introduce a wavelength-multiplexed massively parallel diffractive information storage platform composed of dielectric surfaces that are structurally optimized at the wavelength scale using deep learning to store and project thousands of distinct image patterns, each assigned to a unique wavelength. Through numerical simulations in the visible spectrum, we demonstrated that our wavelength-multiplexed diffractive system can store and project over 4,000 independent desired images/patterns within