Manipulating of Different-Polarized Reflected Waves with Graphene-based Plasmonic Metasurfaces in Terahertz Regime

A graphene-based plasmonic metasurface which can independently control different polarized electromagnetic waves with reasonably small losses in terahertz regime is proposed and demonstrated in this paper. This metasurface is composed of graphene based elements. Owing to anisotropic plasmonic resonance of the graphene-based elements, the reflected phases and magnitudes of orthogonally polarized waves can be independently controlled by varying dimensions of the element. Four types of graphene-based plasmonic metasurfaces with different reflected phases distributions are synthesized and simulated, exhibiting diverse functions such as polarized beam splitting, beam deflection, and linear-to-circular polarization conversion. The simulation results demonstrate excellent performances as theoretical expectation. The proposed graphene-based plasmonic metasurface can be applied to realize extremely light-weight, ultra-compact, and high-performances electromagnetic structures for diverse terahertz applications.

Single-pixel computational ghost imaging with helicity-dependent metasurface hologram

Different optical imaging techniques are based on different characteristics of light. By controlling the abrupt phase discontinuities with different polarized incident light, a metasurface can host a phase-only and helicity-dependent hologram. In contrast, ghost imaging (GI) is an indirect imaging modality to retrieve the object information from the correlation of the light intensity fluctuations. We report single-pixel computational GI with a high-efficiency reflective metasurface in both simulations and experiments. Playing a fascinating role in switching the GI target with different polarized light, the metasurface hologram generates helicity-dependent reconstructed ghost images and successfully introduces an additional security lock in a proposed optical encryption scheme based on the GI. The robustness of our encryption scheme is further verified with the vulnerability test. Building the first bridge between the metasurface hologram and the GI, our work paves the way to integrate their applications in the fields of optical communications, imaging technology, and security.

Conformal metasurface-coated dielectric waveguides for highly confined broadband optical activity with simultaneous low-visibility and reduced crosstalk

The ability to achieve simultaneous control over the various electromagnetic properties of dielectric waveguides, including mode confinement, polarization, scattering signature, and crosstalk, which are critical to system miniaturization, diversity in functionality, and non-invasive integration, has been a highly sought after yet elusive goal. Currently existing methods, which rely on three-dimensional artificial cores or claddings and/or structural chirality, provide efficient paths for obtaining either highly confined modes, optical activity, or a low-scattering signature, but at the expense of increased propagation loss, form factor and weight. Here, by tailoring the unique anisotropy and exploiting the inter-cell coupling of metasurface coatings, we report a unified approach for simultaneously controlling the diverse optical properties of dielectric waveguides. The experimentally demonstrated highly confined sub-wavelength dielectric waveguide with a low-visibility and broadband optical activity represents a transformative wave manipulation capability with far reaching implications, offering new pathways for future miniaturization of dielectric waveguide-based systems with simultaneous polarization and scattering control.Controlling all the optical properties of dielectric waveguides is a challenging task and often requires complicated core- and cladding designs. Here, Jiang et al. demonstrate that a thin metasurface coating can control several optical properties simultaneously over a broad frequency range.

Tailoring the plasmon-induced transparency resonances in terahertz metamaterials

We experimentally demonstrate that a coupled metamaterial composed of sub-wavelength split-ring-resonators (SRRs) and closed-ring-resonators (CRRs) can tailor the plasmon-induced-transparency (PIT) resonances when the external electric field is parallel to the gaps of SRRs. Rotating or moving SRRs in vertical direction plays a critical role in the EIT functionality, while an excellent robust performance can be acquired via moving SRRs in the horizontal direction. Based on the results, a polarization-independent and polarization-dependent planar metamaterial are designed, fabricated and measured. In contrast to the spectral property of the polarization-independent medium, the polarization-dependent one is featured by isolated PIT phenomena in the frequency-domain, with respect to the horizontal and vertical polarized incident beam. Transmission responses of the PIT metamaterial are characterized with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy, showing a good agreement with the rigorous numerical simulation results. The presented work delivers a unique way to excite and modulate the PIT response, toward developing polarization-independent and polarization-dependent slow-light building blocks, ultrasensitive sensors and narrow-band filters functioning in the THz regime.

Broadband room temperature strong coupling between quantum dots and metamaterials

Herein, we report the first demonstration of room temperature enhanced light-matter coupling in the visible regime for metamaterials using cooperative coupled quasi two dimensional quantum dot assemblies located at precise distances from the hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) templates. The non-monotonic variation of the magnitude of strong coupling, manifested in terms of strong splitting of the photoluminescence of quantum dots, can be explained in terms of enhanced LDOS near the surface of such metamaterials as well as the plasmon mediated super-radiance of closely spaced quantum dots (QDs). Our methodology of enhancing broadband, room temperature, light-matter coupling in the visible regime for metamaterials opens up new possibilities of utilising these materials for a wide range of applications including QD based thresholdless nanolasers and novel metamaterial based integrated photonic devices.

Modulating Sound with Acoustic Metafiber Bundles

Acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces provide great flexibility for manipulating sound waves and promise unprecedented functionality, ranging from transformation acoustics, acoustic cloaking, acoustic imaging to acoustic rerouting. However, the design of artificial structures with both broad bandwidth and multifunctionality remains challenging with traditional design approaches. Here we present a design and realization of a broadband acoustic metafiber bundle. Very different from previously reported acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces, not only the metafiber structure is simple, flexible and tunable, but also the metafiber bundle has the advantages of broad bandwidth, high transmission, no resonance-induced energy loss and unchangeable output wavefront owing to eigenmodes in the passbands of the metafiber. Besides, it could also achieve arbitrary complex modulations of cylindrical and plane acoustic wavefronts. The metafiber bundles realize the exciting multifunctionality of both acoustic metamaterials and metasurfaces in a broad frequency range, which provides diverse routes to design novel acoustic devices with versatile applications.

Generating broadband vortex modes in ring-core fiber by using a plasmonic q-plate

A mode convertor was proposed and investigated for generating vortex modes in a ring-core fiber based on a plasmonic q-plate (PQP), which is composed of specially organized L-shaped resonator (LSR) arrays. A multicore fiber was used to transmit fundamental modes, and the LSR arrays were used to modulate phases of these fundamental modes. Behind the PQP, the transmitted fundamental modes with gradient phase distribution can be considered as the incident lights for generating broadband vortex modes in the ring-core fiber filter. The topological charges of generated vortex modes can be various by using an optical PQP with different q, and the chirality of the generated vortex mode can be controlled by the sign of q and handedness of the incident circularly polarized light. The operation bandwidth is 800 nm in the range of 1200-2000 nm, which covers six communication bands from the O band to the U band. The separation of vortex modes also was addressed by using a dual ring-core fiber. The mode convertor is of potential interest for connecting a traditional network and vortex communication network.

Photonic Spin Hall Effect in Waveguides Composed of Two Types of Single-Negative Metamaterials

The polarization controlled optical signal routing has many important applications in photonics such as polarization beam splitter. By using two-dimensional transmission lines with lumped elements, we experimentally demonstrate the selective excitation of guided modes in waveguides composed of two kinds of single-negative metamaterials. A localized, circularly polarized emitter placed near the interface of the two kinds of single-negative metamaterials only couples with one guided mode with a specific propagating direction determined by the polarization handedness of the source. Moreover, this optical spin-orbit locking phenomenon, also called the photonic spin Hall effect, is robust against interface fluctuations, which may be very useful in the manipulation of electromagnetic signals.

Electromagnetic reprogrammable coding-metasurface holograms

Metasurfaces have enabled a plethora of emerging functions within an ultrathin dimension, paving way towards flat and highly integrated photonic devices. Despite the rapid progress in this area, simultaneous realization of reconfigurability, high efficiency, and full control over the phase and amplitude of scattered light is posing a great challenge. Here, we try to tackle this challenge by introducing the concept of a reprogrammable hologram based on 1-bit coding metasurfaces. The state of each unit cell of the coding metasurface can be switched between ‘1’ and ‘0’ by electrically controlling the loaded diodes. Our proof-of-concept experiments show that multiple desired holographic images can be realized in real time with only a single coding metasurface. The proposed reprogrammable hologram may be a key in enabling future intelligent devices with reconfigurable and programmable functionalities that may lead to advances in a variety of applications such as microscopy, display, security, data storage, and information processing.

Realizing metasurfaces with reconfigurability, high efficiency, and control over phase and amplitude is a challenge. Here, Li et al. introduce a reprogrammable hologram based on a 1-bit coding metasurface, where the state of each unit cell of the coding metasurface can be switched electrically.

Multifunctional interleaved geometric-phase dielectric metasurfaces

Shared-aperture technology for multifunctional planar systems, performing several simultaneous tasks, was first introduced in the field of radar antennas. In photonics, effective control of the electromagnetic response can be achieved by a geometric-phase mechanism implemented within a metasurface, enabling spin-controlled phase modulation. The synthesis of the shared-aperture and geometric-phase concepts facilitates the generation of multifunctional metasurfaces. Here shared-aperture geometric-phase metasurfaces were realized via the interleaving of sparse antenna sub-arrays, forming Si-based devices consisting of multiplexed geometric-phase profiles. We study the performance limitations of interleaved nanoantenna arrays by means of a Wigner phase-space distribution to establish the ultimate information capacity of a metasurface-based photonic system. Within these limitations, we present multifunctional spin-dependent dielectric metasurfaces, and demonstrate multiple-beam technology for optical rotation sensing. We also demonstrate the possibility of achieving complete real-time control and measurement of the fundamental, intrinsic properties of light, including frequency, polarization and orbital angular momentum.

Multifunctional Hyperbolic Nanogroove Metasurface for Submolecular Detection

Metasurface serves as a promising plasmonic sensing platform for engineering the enhanced light-matter interactions. Here, a hyperbolic metasurface with the nanogroove structure in the subwavelength scale is designed. This metasurface is able to modify the wavefront and wavelength of surface plasmon wave with the variation of the nanogroove width or periodicity. At the specific optical frequency, surface plasmon polaritons are tightly confined and propagated with a diffraction-free feature due to the epsilon-near-zero effect. Most importantly, the groove hyperbolic metasurface can enhance the plasmonic sensing with an ultrahigh phase sensitivity of 30 373 deg RIU^-1 and Goos-Hänchen shift sensitivity of 10.134 mm RIU^-1 . The detection resolution for refractive index change of glycerol solution is achieved as 10^-8 RIU based on the phase measurement. The detection limit of bovine serum albumin (BSA) molecule is measured as low as 0.1 × 10^-18 m (1 × 10^-19 mol L^-1 ), which corresponds to a submolecular detection level (0.13 BSA mm^-2 ). As for low-weight biotin molecule, the detection limit is estimated below 1 × 10^-15 m (1 × 10^-15 mol L^-1 , 1300 biotin mm^-2 ). This enhanced plasmonic sensing performance is two orders of magnitude higher than those with current state-of-art plasmonic metamaterials and metasurfaces.

Achieving low-emissivity materials with high transmission for broadband radio-frequency signals

The use of low-emissivity (low-e) materials in modern buildings is an extremely efficient way to save energy. However, such materials are coated by metallic films, which can strongly block radio-frequency signals and prevent indoor-outdoor wireless communication. Here, we demonstrate that, when specially-designed metallic metasurfaces are covered on them, the low-e materials can remain low emissivity for thermal radiation and allow very high transmission for a broad band of radio-frequency signals. It is found that the application of air-connected metasurfaces with subwavelength periods is critical to the observed high transmission. Such effects disappear if periods are comparable to wavelengths or metal-connected structures are utilized. The conclusion is supported by both simulations and experiments. Advantages such as easy to process, low cost, large-area fabrication and design versatility of the metasurface make it a promising candidate to solve the indoor outdoor communication problem.

Controlling propagation and coupling of waveguide modes using phase-gradient metasurfaces

Research on two-dimensional designer optical structures, or metasurfaces, has mainly focused on controlling the wavefronts of light propagating in free space. Here, we show that gradient metasurface structures consisting of phased arrays of plasmonic or dielectric nanoantennas can be used to control guided waves via strong optical scattering at subwavelength intervals. Based on this design principle, we experimentally demonstrate waveguide mode converters, polarization rotators and waveguide devices supporting asymmetric optical power transmission. We also demonstrate all-dielectric on-chip polarization rotators based on phased arrays of Mie resonators with negligible insertion losses. Our gradient metasurfaces can enable small-footprint, broadband and low-loss photonic integrated devices.

Fano-resonance-assisted metasurface for color routing

Controlling the phase of an electromagnetic field using plasmonic nanostructures provides a versatile way to manipulate light at the nanoscale. Broadband phase modulation has been demonstrated using inhomogeneous metasurfaces with different geometries; however, for many applications such as filtering, hyperspectral imaging and color holography, narrowband frequecy selectivity is a key functionality. In this work, we demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, a narrowband metasurface that relies on Fano resonances to control the propagation of light. By geometrically tuning the sub-radiant modes with respect to a fixed super-radiant resonance, we can create a phase modulation along the surface within a narrow spectral range. The resulting anomalous reflection measured for such a Fano-resonant metasurface exhibits a 100 nm bandwidth and a color routing efficiency of up to 81% at a central wavelength of λ=750 nm. The design flexibility provided by this Fano-assisted metasurface for color-selective light manipulation is further illustrated by demonstrating a highly directional color-routing effect between two channels, at λ=532 and 660 nm, without any crosstalk.

Manipulation of vector beam polarization with geometric metasurfaces

Describing a class of beams with space-variant polarization, vector beams find many applications in both classical and quantum optics. However, simultaneous manipulation of its space-dependent polarization states is still a challenge with a single optical element. Here we demonstrate polarization modulation of a vector field by employing a plasmonic metasurface exhibiting strong and controllable optical activity. By changing the lateral phase shift between two reflective metasurface supercells, the rotation angle of a linear polarized light can be continuously tuned from zero to π with a high efficiency. As the optical activity of our metasurface devices only depends on geometrical phase, the metasurfaces can simultaneously modulate the rotation angle of a vector beam regardless of its space-variant polarization distribution. Our work provides a high efficient method in manipulating the polarization state of vector beams, especially with metasurface in a compact space, which presents great potential in research fields involving vector beams.

Shaping electromagnetic waves using software-automatically-designed metasurfaces

We present a fully digital procedure of designing reflective coding metasurfaces to shape reflected electromagnetic waves. The design procedure is completely automatic, controlled by a personal computer. In details, the macro coding units of metasurface are automatically divided into several types (e.g. two types for 1-bit coding, four types for 2-bit coding, etc.), and each type of the macro coding units is formed by discretely random arrangement of micro coding units. By combining an optimization algorithm and commercial electromagnetic software, the digital patterns of the macro coding units are optimized to possess constant phase difference for the reflected waves. The apertures of the designed reflective metasurfaces are formed by arranging the macro coding units with certain coding sequence. To experimentally verify the performance, a coding metasurface is fabricated by automatically designing two digital 1-bit unit cells, which are arranged in array to constitute a periodic coding metasurface to generate the required four-beam radiations with specific directions. Two complicated functional metasurfaces with circularly- and elliptically-shaped radiation beams are realized by automatically designing 4-bit macro coding units, showing excellent performance of the automatic designs by software. The proposed method provides a smart tool to realize various functional devices and systems automatically.

Reconfigurable metasurfaces that enable light polarization control by light

Plasmonic metasurfaces have recently attracted much attention because of their novel characteristics with respect to light polarization and wave front control on deep-subwavelength scales. The development of metasurfaces with reconfigurable optical responses is opening new opportunities in high-capacity communications, real-time holograms and adaptive optics. Such tunable devices have been developed in the mid-infrared spectral range and operated in light intensity modulation schemes. Here we present a novel optically reconfigurable hybrid metasurface that enables polarization tuning at optical frequencies. The functionality of tuning is realized by switching the coupling conditions between the plasmonic modes and the binary isomeric states of an ethyl red switching layer upon light stimulation. We achieved more than 20° nonlinear changes in the transmitted polarization azimuth using just 4 mW of switching light power. Such design schemes and principles could be easily applied to dynamically adjust the functionalities of other metasurfaces.

Broadband spin Hall effect of light in single nanoapertures

With properties not previously available, optical metamaterials and metasurfaces have shown their great potential in the precise control of light waves at the nanoscale. However, the use of current metamaterials and metasurfaces is limited by the collective response of the meta-atoms/molecules, which means that a single element cannot provide the functionalities required by most applications. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that a single achiral nanoaperture can be utilized as a meta-macromolecule to achieve giant angular spin Hall effect of light. By controlling the spin-related momenta, we show that these nanoapertures can enable full control of the phase gradient at a deep-subwavelength level, thus forming unique building blocks for optical metasurfaces. As a proof-of-concept demonstration, a miniaturized Bessel-like beam generator and flat lens are designed and experimentally characterized. The results presented here may open a door for the development of meta-macromolecule-based metasurfaces for integrated optical systems and nanophotonics.

Recent advances in the spin Hall effect of light

The spin Hall effect (SHE) of light, as an analogue of the SHE in electronic systems, is a promising candidate for investigating the SHE in semiconductor spintronics/valleytronics, high-energy physics and condensed matter physics, owing to their similar topological nature in the spin-orbit interaction. The SHE of light exhibits unique potential for exploring the physical properties of nanostructures, such as determining the optical thickness, and the material properties of metallic and magnetic thin films and even atomically thin two-dimensional materials. More importantly, it opens a possible pathway for controlling the spin states of photons and developing next-generation photonic spin Hall devices as a fundamental constituent of the emerging spinoptics. In this review, based on the viewpoint of the geometric phase gradient, we give a detailed presentation of the recent advances in the SHE of light and its applications in precision metrology and future spin-based photonics.

Optical metasurfaces for high angle steering at visible wavelengths

Metasurfaces have facilitated the replacement of conventional optical elements with ultrathin and planar photonic structures. Previous designs of metasurfaces were limited to small deflection angles and small ranges of the angle of incidence. Here, we have created two types of Si-based metasurfaces to steer visible light to a large deflection angle. These structures exhibit high diffraction efficiencies over a broad range of angles of incidence. We have demonstrated metasurfaces working both in transmission and reflection modes based on conventional thin film silicon processes that are suitable for the large-scale fabrication of high-performance devices.

Optical gears in a nanophotonic directional coupler

Gears are rotating machines, meshing with each other by teeth to transmit torque. Interestingly, the rotating directions of two meshing gears are opposite, clockwise and counterclockwise. Although this opposite handedness motion has been widely investigated in machinery science, the analogue behavior of light remains undiscovered. Here, we present a simple nanophotonic directional coupler structure which can generate two light beams with opposite handedness of polarization states-optical gears. Due to the abrupt phase shift effect and birefringence effect, the angular momentum (AM) states of photons vary with the propagation distance in two adjacent waveguides of the coupler. Thus, by the choice of coupling length, it is able to obtain two light beams with opposite handedness of polarization, confirming the appearance of optical gears. The full control in the handedness of output beams is achieved via tuning the relative phase between two orthogonal modes at the input port. Optical gears thus offer the possibility of exploring light-matter interactions in nanoscale, opening up new avenues in fields of integrated quantum computing and nanoscale bio-sensing of chiral molecules.

Ultrathin Nonlinear Metasurface for Optical Image Encoding

Security of optical information is of great importance in modern society. Many cryptography techniques based on classical and quantum optics have been widely explored in the linear optical regime. Nonlinear optical encryption in which encoding and decoding involve nonlinear frequency conversions represents a new strategy for securing optical information. Here, we demonstrate that an ultrathin nonlinear photonic metasurface, consisting of meta-atoms with 3-fold rotational symmetry, can be used to hide optical images under illumination with a fundamental wave. However, the hidden image can be read out from second harmonic generation (SHG) waves. This is achieved by controlling the destructive and constructive interferences of SHG waves from two neighboring meta-atoms. In addition, we apply this concept to obtain gray scale SHG imaging. Nonlinear metasurfaces based on space variant optical interference open new avenues for multilevel image encryption, anticounterfeiting, and background free image reconstruction.

High-efficiency chirality-modulated spoof surface plasmon meta-coupler

Efficiently exciting surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) is highly desired in many photonic applications, but most approaches (such as prism and grating couplers) cannot control flexibly their SPP excitation directions. While Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) metasurfaces were recently proposed to achieve direction-controllable SPP excitations, such scheme suffers from low-efficiency issue due to both direct reflections at the coupler surface and the mode mismatch between the coupler and the guiding-out plasmonic structure. In this article, we solve these issues via imposing two criterions to guide design both the metasurface and the plasmonic metal, based on which a direction-controllable SPP excitation with very high efficiency can be realized. As a proof of concept, we designed/fabricated a realistic device working in the microwave regime, and performed both near-field and far-field measurements to demonstrate that it can achieve an spoof SPP conversion efficiency ~78%, much higher than previous devices. Full-wave simulations are in good agreement with experiments, showing that the efficiency can be further pushed to 92% with optimized designs. Our findings can stimulate spoof SPP-related applications, particularly can help enhance the spin-dependent light-matter interactions in low frequency regime.

Twisting Fluorescence through Extrinsic Chiral Antennas

Plasmonic antennas and planar structures have been undergoing intensive developments in order to control the scattering and absorption of light. One specific class, extrinsic chiral surfaces, that does not possess 2-fold rotational symmetry exhibits strong asymmetric transmission for different circular polarizations under obliquely incident illumination. In this work, we show that the design of those surfaces can be optimized with complex multipolar resonances in order to twist the fluorescence emission from nearby molecules. While this emission is usually dipolar and linearly polarized, the interaction with these resonances twists it into a multipolar radiation pattern with opposite helicity in different directions. The proposed structure maximizes this effect and provides control over the polarization of light. Splitting of left- and right-handed circularly polarized light is experimentally obtained in the backward direction. These results highlight the intricate interplay between the near-field absorption and the far-field scattering of a plasmonic nanostructure and are further used for modifying the emission of incoherent quantum sources. Our finding can potentially lead to the development of polarization- and angle-resolved ultracompact optical devices.

Multichannel Polarization-Controllable Superpositions of Orbital Angular Momentum States

A facile metasurface approach is shown to realize polarization-controllable multichannel superpositions of orbital angular momentum (OAM) states with various topological charges. By manipulating the polarization state of the incident light, four kinds of superpositions of OAM states are realized using a single metasurface consisting of space-variant arrays of gold nanoantennas.

Metamaterial, plasmonic and nanophotonic devices

The field of metamaterials has opened landscapes of possibilities in basic science, and a paradigm shift in the way we think about and design emergent material properties. In many scenarios, metamaterial concepts have helped overcome long-held scientific challenges, such as the absence of optical magnetism and the limits imposed by diffraction in optical imaging. As the potential of metamaterials, as well as their limitations, become clearer, these advances in basic science have started to make an impact on several applications in different areas, with far-reaching implications for many scientific and engineering fields. At optical frequencies, the alliance of metamaterials with the fields of plasmonics and nanophotonics can further advance the possibility of controlling light propagation, radiation, localization and scattering in unprecedented ways. In this review article, we discuss the recent progress in the field of metamaterials, with particular focus on how fundamental advances in this field are enabling a new generation of metamaterial, plasmonic and nanophotonic devices. Relevant examples include optical nanocircuits and nanoantennas, invisibility cloaks, superscatterers and superabsorbers, metasurfaces for wavefront shaping and wave-based analog computing, as well as active, nonreciprocal and topological devices. Throughout the paper, we highlight the fundamental limitations and practical challenges associated with the realization of advanced functionalities, and we suggest potential directions to go beyond these limits. Over the next few years, as new scientific breakthroughs are translated into technological advances, the fields of metamaterials, plasmonics and nanophotonics are expected to have a broad impact on a variety of applications in areas of scientific, industrial and societal significance.

Valley photonic crystals for control of spin and topology

Photonic crystals offer unprecedented opportunity for light manipulation and applications in optical communication and sensing. Exploration of topology in photonic crystals and metamaterials with non-zero gauge field has inspired a number of intriguing optical phenomena such as one-way transport and Weyl points. Recently, a new degree of freedom, valley, has been demonstrated in two-dimensional materials. Here, we propose a concept of valley photonic crystals with electromagnetic duality symmetry but broken inversion symmetry. We observe photonic valley Hall effect originating from valley-dependent spin-split bulk bands, even in topologically trivial photonic crystals. Valley-spin locking behaviour results in selective net spin flow inside bulk valley photonic crystals. We also show the independent control of valley and topology in a single system that has been long pursued in electronic systems, resulting in topologically-protected flat edge states. Valley photonic crystals not only offer a route towards the observation of non-trivial states, but also open the way for device applications in integrated photonics and information processing using spin-dependent transportation.

Dynamical beam manipulation based on 2-bit digitally-controlled coding metasurface

Recently, a concept of digital metamaterials has been proposed to manipulate field distribution through proper spatial mixtures of digital metamaterial bits. Here, we present a design of 2-bit digitally-controlled coding metasurface that can effectively modulate the scattered electromagnetic wave and realize different far-field beams. Each meta-atom of this metasurface integrates two pin diodes, and by tuning their operating states, the metasurface has four phase responses of 0, π/2, π, and 3π/2, corresponding to four basic digital elements “00”, “01”, “10”, and “11”, respectively. By designing the coding sequence of the above digital element array, the reflected beam can be arbitrarily controlled. The proposed 2-bit digital metasurface has been demonstrated to possess capability of achieving beam deflection, multi-beam and beam diffusion, and the dynamical switching of these different scattering patterns is completed by a programmable electric source.

Controlling thermal emission of phonon by magnetic metasurfaces

Our experiment shows that the thermal emission of phonon can be controlled by magnetic resonance (MR) mode in a metasurface (MTS). Through changing the structural parameter of metasurface, the MR wavelength can be tuned to the phonon resonance wavelength. This introduces a strong coupling between phonon and MR, which results in an anticrossing phonon-plasmons mode. In the process, we can manipulate the polarization and angular radiation of thermal emission of phonon. Such metasurface provides a new kind of thermal emission structures for various thermal management applications.

Coherent Control of Optical Spin-to-Orbital Angular Momentum Conversion in Metasurface

Efficient control over the conversion of optical angular momentum from spin to orbital form in a metasurface system is achieved. Under coherent symmetric incidence, it can support nearly 100% conversion and unitary output, while it can support 50% conversion with 25% transmittance under one beam incidence.

Full-Color Plasmonic Metasurface Holograms

Holography is one of the most attractive approaches for reconstructing optical images, due to its capability of recording both the amplitude and phase information on light scattered from objects. Recently, optical metasurfaces for manipulating the wavefront of light with well-controlled amplitude, phase, and polarization have been utilized to reproduce computer-generated holograms. However, the currently available metasurface holograms have only been designed to achieve limited colors and record either amplitude or phase information. This fact significantly limits the performance of metasurface holograms to reconstruct full-color images with low noise and high quality. Here, we report the design and realization of ultrathin plasmonic metasurface holograms made of subwavelength nanoslits for reconstructing both two- and three-dimensional full-color holographic images. The wavelength-multiplexed metasurface holograms with both amplitude and phase modulations at subwavelength scale can faithfully produce not only three primary colors but also their secondary colors. Our results will advance various holographic applications.

Tunable Spin dependent beam shift by simultaneously tailoring geometric and dynamical phases of light in inhomogeneous anisotropic medium

Spin orbit interaction and the resulting Spin Hall effect of light are under recent intensive investigations because of their fundamental nature and potential applications. Here, we report an interesting manifestation of spin Hall effect of light and demonstrate its tunability in an inhomogeneous anisotropic medium exhibiting spatially varying retardance level. In our system, the beam shift occurs only for one circular polarization mode keeping the other orthogonal mode unaffected, which is shown to arise due to the combined spatial gradients of the geometric phase and the dynamical phase of light. The constituent two orthogonal circular polarization modes of an input linearly polarized light evolve in different trajectories, eventually manifesting as a large and tunable spin separation. The spin dependent beam shift and the demonstrated principle of simultaneously tailoring space-varying geometric and dynamical phase of light for achieving its tunability (of both magnitude and direction), may provide an attractive route towards development of spin-optical devices.

Multi-beam reflections with flexible control of polarizations by using anisotropic metasurfaces

We propose a method to convert linearly polarized incident electromagnetic waves fed by a single source into multi-beam reflections with independent control of polarizations based on anisotropic metasurface at microwave frequencies. The metasurface is composed of Jerusalem Cross structures and grounded plane spaced by a dielectric substrate. By designing the reflection-phase distributions of the anisotropic metasurface along the x and y directions, the x- and y-polarized incident waves can be manipulated independently to realize multi-beam reflections. When the x- and y-polarized reflected beams are designed to the same direction with equal amplitude, the polarization state of the beam will be only controlled by the phase difference between the x- and y-polarized reflected waves. Three examples are presented to show the multi-beam reflections with flexible control of polarizations by using anisotropic metasurfaces and excellent performance. Particularly, we designed, fabricated, and measured an anisotropic metasurface for two reflected beams with one linearly polarized and the other circularly polarized. The measurement results have good agreement with the simulations in a broad bandwidth.

Optical beam shifts in graphene and single-layer boron-nitride

Optical beam shifts from a freestanding 2D atomic crystal are investigated. In contrast with a 3D crystal, the magnitude of the Goos-Hänchen shift depends on the surface susceptibility of the crystal and not on the wavelength of the incident light beam. The surface conductivity of the atomically thin crystal is less important in this context because it enters in the expression of the shifts only as a second-order parameter. In analogy to a 3D crystal, the magnitudes of the Imbert-Fedorov shift and of the angular shifts depend, respectively, on the wavelength and on the square of the beam angular aperture.

Photonic Multitasking Interleaved Si Nanoantenna Phased Array

Metasurfaces provide unprecedented control over light propagation by imparting local, space-variant phase changes on an incident electromagnetic wave. They can improve the performance of conventional optical elements and facilitate the creation of optical components with new functionalities and form factors. Here, we build on knowledge from shared aperture phased array antennas and Si-based gradient metasurfaces to realize various multifunctional metasurfaces capable of achieving multiple distinct functions within a single surface region. As a key point, we demonstrate that interleaving multiple optical elements can be accomplished without reducing the aperture of each subelement. Multifunctional optical elements constructed from Si-based gradient metasurface are realized, including axial and lateral multifocus geometric phase metasurface lenses. We further demonstrate multiwavelength color imaging with a high spatial resolution. Finally, optical imaging functionality with simultaneous color separation has been obtained by using multifunctional metasurfaces, which opens up new opportunities for the field of advanced imaging and display.

Apparent Negative Reflection with the Gradient Acoustic Metasurface by Integrating Supercell Periodicity into the Generalized Law of Reflection

As the two dimensional version of the functional wavefront manipulation metamaterial, metasurface has become a research hot spot for engineering the wavefront at will with a subwavelength thickness. The wave scattered by the gradient metasurface, which is composed by the periodic supercells, is governed by the generalized Snell’s law. However, the critical angle that derived from the generalized Snell’s law circles the domain of the incident angles that allow the occurrence of the anomalous reflection and refraction, and no free space scattering waves could exist when the incident angle is beyond the critical angle. Here we theoretically demonstrate that apparent negative reflection can be realized by a gradient acoustic metasurface when the incident angle is beyond the critical angle. The underlying mechanism of the apparent negative reflection is understood as the higher order diffraction arising from the interaction between the local phase modulation and the non-local effects introduced by the supercell periodicity. The apparent negative reflection phenomena has been perfectly verified by the calculated scattered acoustic waves of the reflected gradient acoustic metasurface. This work may provide new freedom in designing functional acoustic signal modulation devices, such as acoustic isolator and acoustic illusion device.

Tunable microwave metasurfaces for high-performance operations: dispersion compensation and dynamical switch

Controlling the phase distributions on metasurfaces leads to fascinating effects such as anomalous light refraction/reflection, flat-lens focusing, and optics-vortex generation. However, metasurfaces realized so far largely reply on passive resonant meta-atoms, whose intrinsic dispersions limit such passive meta-devices' performances at frequencies other than the target one. Here, based on tunable meta-atoms with varactor diodes involved, we establish a scheme to resolve these issues for microwave metasurfaces, in which the dispersive response of each meta-atom is precisely controlled by an external voltage imparted on the diode. We experimentally demonstrate two effects utilizing our scheme. First, we show that a tunable gradient metasurface exhibits single-mode high-efficiency operation within a wide frequency band, while its passive counterpart only works at a single frequency but exhibits deteriorated performances at other frequencies. Second, we demonstrate that the functionality of our metasurface can be dynamically switched from a specular reflector to a surface-wave convertor. Our approach paves the road to achieve dispersion-corrected and switchable manipulations of electromagnetic waves.

Spin Hall effect of transmitted light in a three-layer waveguide with lossy epsilon-near-zero metamaterial

We study spin Hall effect (SHE) of transmitted light in a three-layer waveguide with epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterial. As the increased loss of anisotropic ENZ metamaterial brings decreased propagation loss for oblique incidence, the transmission of incident light is enhanced which induces a different distribution of transverse shift peaks. Based on simulation results, the influences of ENZ permittivity components and thickness as well as gold layer thickness on transverse shift of left-circularly polarized light in ENZ/Au/ENZ waveguide are analyzed. In order to make our results convincing we make use of alternating thin layers of silver and germanium stacking to construct anisotropic ENZ metamaterial. The transverse shifts of incident light with different ENZ metamaterial and gold layer thicknesses are obtained. Calculation results show the maximum transverse shifts of left-polarized light for linear polarized light can achieve 49.6 microns. Meanwhile, the enhanced SHE of transmitted light is invariant with the variation of gold layer which shows a great tolerance to fabrication error.

Tunable Pancharatnam-Berry metasurface for dynamical and high-efficiency anomalous reflection

Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) metasurfaces have intrigued a great deal of interest in recent years for anomalous reflection/refraction, vortex plate, orbital angular momentum, flat lens, photonic spin hall effect (PSHE), holograms and reflect/transmit arrays. However, almost all designs are restricted to fixed electrical performance/functionality once the design is finished. Here, we report for the first time a strategy for PB metasurface with agile working frequency by involving each meta-atom with tunable PIN diodes. For verification, a tunable PB metasurface with frequency reconfigurability is designed and numerically characterized across C and X band. By controlling the external voltages imposed on the diodes, numerical results show that the operation band with 180° phase difference between orthogonal reflection coefficients can be dynamically controlled. As such, the resulting PB metasurface composed of these orderly rotated meta-atoms exhibits a broadband PSHE with nearly 100% conversion efficiency in the "On" state while switches to dual well-separated bands in the "Off" state. Our proposal, not confined to PHSE, set a solid platform for PB phase control and can be populated to any dual-functional and/or multifunctional devices with high integrity, stability and low cost.

Coherent control of double deflected anomalous modes in ultrathin trapezoid-shaped slit metasurface

Coherent light-matter interaction in ultrathin metamaterials has been demonstrated to dynamically modulate intensity, polarization and propagation direction of light. The gradient metasurface with a transverse phase variation usually exhibits an anomalous refracted beam of light dictated by so-called generalized Snell’s law. However, less attention has been paid to coherent control of the metasurface with multiple anomalous refracted beams. Here we propose an ultrathin gradient metasurface with single trapezoid-shaped slot antenna as its building block that allows one normal and two deflected transmitted beams. It is numerically demonstrated that such metasurface with multiple scattering modes can be coherently controlled to modulate output intensities by changing the relative phase difference between two counterpropagating coherent beams. Each mode can be coherently switched on/off and two deflected anomalous beams can be synchronously dictated by the phase difference. The coherent control effect in the trapezoid-shaped slit metasurface will offer a promising opportunity for multichannel signals modulation, multichannel sensing and wave front shaping.

Probing metamaterials with structured light

Photonic metamaterials and metasurfaces are nanostructured optical materials engineered to enable properties that have not been found in nature. Optical characterization of these structures is a challenging task. We report a reliable technique that is particularly useful for characterization of phase properties introduced by small and spatially inhomogeneous samples of metamaterials and metasurfaces. The proposed structured light, or vortex based interferometric method is used to directly visualize phase changes introduced by subwavelength-thick nanostructures. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technique, we designed and fabricated several metasurface samples consisting of metal nano-antennas introducing different phase shifts and experimentally measured phase shifts of the transmitted light. The experimental results are in good agreement with numerical simulations and with the designed properties of the antenna arrays. Due to the presence of the singularity in the vortex beam, one of the potential applications of the proposed approach based on structured light is step-by-step probing of small fractions of the micro-scale samples or images.

Polarization-Insensitive Metalenses at Visible Wavelengths

In this Letter, we demonstrate highly efficient, polarization-insensitive planar lenses (metalenses) at red, green, and blue wavelengths (λ = 660, 532, and 405 nm). Metalenses with numerical apertures (NA) of 0.85 and 0.6 and corresponding efficiencies as high as 60% and 90% are achieved. These metalenses are less than 600 nm-thick and can focus incident light down to diffraction-limited spots as small as ∼0.64λ and provide high-resolution imaging. In addition, the focal spots are very symmetric with high Strehl ratios. The single step lithography and compatibility with large-scale fabrication processes make metalenses highly promising for widespread applications in imaging and spectroscopy.

Information entropy of coding metasurface

Because of their exceptional capability to tailor the effective medium parameters, metamaterials have been widely used to control electromagnetic waves, which has led to the observation of many interesting phenomena, for example, negative refraction, invisibility cloaking, and anomalous reflections and transmissions. However, the studies of metamaterials or metasurfaces are mainly limited to their physical features; currently, there is a lack of viewpoints on metamaterials and metasurfaces from the information perspective. Here we propose to measure the information of a coding metasurface using Shannon entropy. We establish an analytical connection between the coding pattern of an arbitrary coding metasurface and its far-field pattern. We introduce geometrical entropy to describe the information of the coding pattern (or coding sequence) and physical entropy to describe the information of the far-field pattern of the metasurface. The coding metasurface is demonstrated to enhance the information in transmitting messages, and the amount of enhanced information can be manipulated by designing the coding pattern with different information entropies. The proposed concepts and entropy control method will be helpful in new information systems (for example, communication, radar and imaging) that are based on the coding metasurfaces.

Simultaneous generation of high-efficiency broadband asymmetric anomalous refraction and reflection waves with few-layer anisotropic metasurface

Optical metasurfaces consisting of single-layer nanostructures have immensely promising applications in wavefront control because they can be used to arbitrarily manipulate wave phase, and polarization. However, anomalous refraction and reflection waves have not yet been simultaneously and asymmetrically generated, and the limited efficiency and bandwidth of pre-existing single-layer metasurfaces hinder their practical applications. Here, a few-layer anisotropic metasurface is presented for simultaneously generating high-efficiency broadband asymmetric anomalous refraction and reflection waves. Moreover, the normal transmission and reflection waves are low and the anomalous waves are the predominant ones, which is quite beneficial for practical applications such as beam deflectors. Our work provides an effective method of enhancing the performance of anomalous wave generation, and the asymmetric performance of the proposed metasurface shows endless possibilities in wavefront control for nanophotonics device design and optical communication applications.

Wavelength de-multiplexing metasurface hologram

A wavelength de-multiplexing metasurface hologram composed of subwavelength metallic antennas is designed and demonstrated experimentally in the terahertz (THz) regime. Different character patterns are generated at the separated working frequencies 0.50 THz and 0.63 THz which determine a narrow frequency bandwidth of 130 GHz. The two working frequencies are around the central resonance frequency of the antennas where antennas behave strong wavefront modulation. Each antenna is fully utilized to control the wavefront of the metasurface at different frequencies by an optimization algorithm. The results demonstrate a candidate way to design multi-colors optical display elements.

Strong Spin-Orbit Interaction of Light in Plasmonic Nanostructures and Nanocircuits

The coupling between the spin and orbital degrees of freedom of photons is usually very weak, but recent studies have shown that this spin-orbit interaction (SOI) can be easily detected in metal structures. Here we show how the SOI of light is enhanced in plasmonic metal nanostructures, explore the underlying mechanism for this effect, and further demonstrate how it could potentially be harnessed for nanophotonic applications. Specifically, we show that the scattering of circularly polarized photons by a single metal nanosphere causes light to propagate along sharply twisted chiral trajectories near the nanosphere, thus revealing a strong SOI in the near field of surface plasmons. We find similar spin-dependent trajectories of light induced by a strong SOI also in the near field of surface plasmons generated on the tip of a metal nanowire. We utilize this strong SOI to for the first time experimentally realize spin sorting of photons in a compact plasmonic nanocircuit. The findings offer insights into how the SOI of light can be enhanced and explored for a new degree of freedom in plasmonic nanocircuits and future spin-controlled nanophotonic devices.

Thermopile detector of light ellipticity

Polarimetric imaging is widely used in applications from material analysis to biomedical diagnostics, vision and astronomy. The degree of circular polarization, or light ellipticity, is associated with the S₃ Stokes parameter which is defined as the difference in the intensities of the left- and right-circularly polarized components of light. Traditional way of determining this parameter relies on using several external optical elements, such as polarizers and wave plates, along with conventional photodetectors, and performing at least two measurements to distinguish left- and right-circularly polarized light components. Here we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate a thermopile photodetector element that provides bipolar voltage output directly proportional to the S₃ Stokes parameter of the incident light.

Differences in the intensity of the left- and right-circularly polarized components of light can provide useful information about the chirality of electromagnetic radiation. Here, the authors demonstrate a monolithic photodetector that translates this difference in incident radiation directly into a voltage

Convolution Operations on Coding Metasurface to Reach Flexible and Continuous Controls of Terahertz Beams

The concept of coding metasurface makes a link between physically metamaterial particles and digital codes, and hence it is possible to perform digital signal processing on the coding metasurface to realize unusual physical phenomena. Here, this study presents to perform Fourier operations on coding metasurfaces and proposes a principle called as scattering-pattern shift using the convolution theorem, which allows steering of the scattering pattern to an arbitrarily predesigned direction. Owing to the constant reflection amplitude of coding particles, the required coding pattern can be simply achieved by the modulus of two coding matrices. This study demonstrates that the scattering patterns that are directly calculated from the coding pattern using the Fourier transform have excellent agreements to the numerical simulations based on realistic coding structures, providing an efficient method in optimizing coding patterns to achieve predesigned scattering beams. The most important advantage of this approach over the previous schemes in producing anomalous single-beam scattering is its flexible and continuous controls to arbitrary directions. This work opens a new route to study metamaterial from a fully digital perspective, predicting the possibility of combining conventional theorems in digital signal processing with the coding metasurface to realize more powerful manipulations of electromagnetic waves.

Highly efficient singular surface plasmon generation by achiral apertures

We report a highly efficient generation of singular surface plasmon (SP) fields by an achiral plasmonic structure consisting of Λ-shaped apertures. Our quantitative analysis, based on leakage radiation microscopy (LRM), demonstrates that the induced spin-orbit coupling can be tuned by adjusting the apex angle of the Λ-shaped aperture. Specifically, the array of Λ-shaped apertures with the apex angle 60° is shown to give rise to the directional coupling efficiency. The ring of Λ-shaped apertures with the apex angle 60° was found to generate the maximum extinction ratio (ER=11) for the SP singularities between two different polarization states. This result provides a more efficient way for developing an SP focusing and an SP vortex in the field of nanophotonics such as optical tweezers.

Gate-Tunable Conducting Oxide Metasurfaces

Metasurfaces composed of planar arrays of subwavelength artificial structures show promise for extraordinary light manipulation. They have yielded novel ultrathin optical components such as flat lenses, wave plates, holographic surfaces, and orbital angular momentum manipulation and detection over a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, the optical properties of metasurfaces developed to date do not allow for versatile tunability of reflected or transmitted wave amplitude and phase after their fabrication, thus limiting their use in a wide range of applications. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a gate-tunable metasurface that enables dynamic electrical control of the phase and amplitude of the plane wave reflected from the metasurface. Tunability arises from field-effect modulation of the complex refractive index of conducting oxide layers incorporated into metasurface antenna elements which are configured in reflectarray geometry. We measure a phase shift of 180° and ∼30% change in the reflectance by applying 2.5 V gate bias. Additionally, we demonstrate modulation at frequencies exceeding 10 MHz and electrical switching of ±1 order diffracted beams by electrical control over subgroups of metasurface elements, a basic requirement for electrically tunable beam-steering phased array metasurfaces. In principle, electrically gated phase and amplitude control allows for electrical addressability of individual metasurface elements and opens the path to applications in ultrathin optical components for imaging and sensing technologies, such as reconfigurable beam steering devices, dynamic holograms, tunable ultrathin lenses, nanoprojectors, and nanoscale spatial light modulators.