  Controlled charge flows are fundamental to many areas of science and
technology, serving as carriers of energy and information, as probes of
material properties and dynamics, and as a means of revealing or even inducing
broken symmetries. Emerging methods for light-based current control offer
promising routes beyond the speed and adaptability limitations of conventional
voltage-driven systems. However, optical generation and manipulation of
currents at nanometer spatial scales remains a basic challenge and a crucial
step towards scalable optoelectronic systems for microelectronics and
information science. Here, we introduce vectorial optoelectronic metasurfaces
in which ultrafast light pulses induce local directional charge flows around
symmetry-broken plasmonic nanostructures, with tunable responses and arbitrary
patterning down to sub-diffractive nanometer scales. Local symmetries and
vectorial current distributions are revealed by polarization- and
wavelength-sensitive electrical readout and terahertz (THz) emission, while
spatially-tailored global currents are demonstrated in the direct generation of
elusive broadband THz vector beams. We show that in graphene, a detailed
interplay between electrodynamic, thermodynamic, and hydrodynamic degrees of
freedom gives rise to rapidly-evolving nanoscale driving forces and charge
flows under extreme temporal and spatial confinement. These results set the
stage for versatile patterning and optical control over nanoscale currents in
materials diagnostics, THz spectroscopies, nano-magnetism, and ultrafast
information processing.
