Conventional human-driven methods face limitations in designing complex functional metasurfaces. Inverse design is poised to empower metasurface research by embracing fast-growing artificial intelligence. In recent years, many research efforts have been devoted to enriching inverse design principles and applications. In this perspective, we review most commonly used metasurface inverse design strategies including topology optimization, evolutionary optimization, and machine learning techniques. We elaborate on their concepts and working principles, as well as examples of their implementations. We also discuss two emerging research trends: scaling up inverse design for large-area aperiodic metasurfaces and end-to-end inverse design that co-optimizes photonic hardware and post-image processing. Furthermore, recent demonstrations of inverse-designed metasurfaces showing great potential in real-world applications are highlighted. Finally, we discuss challenges in future inverse design advancement, suggest potential research directions, and outlook opportunities for implementing inverse design in nonlocal metasurfaces, reconfigurable metasurfaces, quantum optics, and nonlinear metasurfaces.

中文翻译：

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用逆向设计赋能超曲面：原理和应用

传统的人类驱动方法在设计复杂的功能超表面时面临局限性。逆向设计有望通过采用快速发展的人工智能来增强超表面研究。近年来，许多研究工作致力于丰富逆向设计原理和应用。从这个角度来看，我们回顾了最常用的超曲面逆向设计策略，包括拓扑优化、进化优化和机器学习技术。我们详细阐述了它们的概念和工作原理，以及它们的实现示例。我们还讨论了两个新兴的研究趋势：扩大大面积非周期性超表面的逆向设计和共同优化光子硬件和图像后处理的端到端逆向设计。此外，重点介绍了最近展示的在实际应用中显示出巨大潜力的逆向设计超表面。最后，我们讨论了未来逆向设计进展中的挑战，提出了潜在的研究方向，并展望了在非局部超表面、可重构超表面、量子光学和非线性超表面中实施逆向设计的机会。