Creating Composite Vortex Beams with a Single Geometric Metasurface.

Composite vortex beams (CVBs) have attracted considerable interest recently due to the unique optical properties and potential applications. However, these beams are mainly generated using spatial light modulators, which suffer from large volume, high cost, and limited resolution. Benefiting from the ultrathin nature and unprecedented capability in light manipulation, optical metasurfaces provide a compact platform to perform this task. A metasurface approach to creating these CVBs is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The design is based on the superposition of multiple circularly polarized vortex beams with different topological charges, which is realized based on a geometric metasurface consisting of metallic nanorods with spatially variant orientations. The effects of the initial phases, amplitude coefficients, incident polarization state, and propagation distance on the generated CVBs, which are in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, are experimentally analyzed. This work has opened a new avenue for engineering CVBs with a minimal footprint, which has promising applications ranging from multiple optical traps to quantum science.

Alignment-insensitive bilayer THz metasurface absorbers exceeding 100% bandwidth.

Metamaterial absorbers have been a topic of considerable interest in recent years, with a particular focus on Terahertz (THz) frequencies due to many natural materials having a weak interaction with THz light. Great efforts have aimed to expand such THz absorbers to cover a wide bandwidth whilst also being highly efficient. However, many of these require cascaded or stacked multilayer resonant elements, where even a small deviation in the alignment between layers is extremely detrimental to the performance. Here, we propose a bilayer metasurface absorber (thickness ∼ λ/6) that is immune to such layer misalignments capable of exceeding a fractional bandwidth (FWHM) of 100% of the central frequency. The design works due to a novel absorption mechanism based on Salisbury Screen and anti-reflection absorption mechanisms, using fractal cross absorbers to expand the bandwidth. Our work is of particular benefit to developing devices which require ultra-wide bandwidth, such as bolometric sensing and planar blackbody absorbers, with the extremely robust absorption responses being unaffected by any misalignments between layers - a limiting factor of previous absorbers.

CMOS compatible metamaterial absorbers for hyperspectral medium wave infrared imaging and sensing applications.

We experimentally demonstrate a CMOS compatible medium wave infrared metal-insulator-metal (MIM) metamaterial absorber structure where for a single dielectric spacer thickness at least 93% absorption is attained for 10 separate bands centred at 3.08, 3.30, 3.53, 3.78, 4.14, 4.40, 4.72, 4.94, 5.33, 5.60 µm. Previous hyperspectral MIM metamaterial absorber designs required that the thickness of the dielectric spacer layer be adjusted in order to attain selective unity absorption across the band of interest thereby increasing complexity and cost. We show that the absorption characteristics of the hyperspectral metamaterial structures are polarization insensitive and invariant for oblique incident angles up to 25° making them suitable for practical implementation in an imaging system. Finally, we also reveal that under TM illumination and at certain oblique incident angles there is an extremely narrowband Fano resonance (Q > 50) between the MIM absorber mode and the surface plasmon polariton mode that could have applications in hazardous/toxic gas identification and biosensing.

Pancharatnam-Berry Phase Induced Spin-Selective Transmission in Herringbone Dielectric Metamaterials.

A dielectric metamaterial approach for achieving spin-selective transmission of electromagnetic waves is proposed. The design is based on spin-controlled constructive or destructive interference between propagating phase and Pancharatnam-Berry phase. The dielectric metamaterial, consisting of monolithic silicon herringbone structures, exhibits a broadband operation in the terahertz regime.

Ultracompact high-efficiency polarising beam splitter based on silicon nanobrick arrays.

Since the transmission of anisotropic nano-structures is sensitive to the polarisation of an incident beam, a novel polarising beam splitter (PBS) based on silicon nanobrick arrays is proposed. With careful design of such structures, an incident beam with polarisation direction aligned with the long axis of the nanobrick is almost totally reflected (~98.5%), whilst that along the short axis is nearly totally transmitted (~94.3%). More importantly, by simply changing the width of the nanobrick we can shift the peak response wavelength from 1460 nm to 1625 nm, covering S, C and L bands of the fiber telecommunications windows. The silicon nanobrick-based PBS can find applications in many fields which require ultracompactness, high efficiency, and compatibility with semiconductor industry technologies.

Metasurface holograms reaching 80% efficiency.

Surfaces covered by ultrathin plasmonic structures--so-called metasurfaces--have recently been shown to be capable of completely controlling the phase of light, representing a new paradigm for the design of innovative optical elements such as ultrathin flat lenses, directional couplers for surface plasmon polaritons and wave plate vortex beam generation. Among the various types of metasurfaces, geometric metasurfaces, which consist of an array of plasmonic nanorods with spatially varying orientations, have shown superior phase control due to the geometric nature of their phase profile. Metasurfaces have recently been used to make computer-generated holograms, but the hologram efficiency remained too low at visible wavelengths for practical purposes. Here, we report the design and realization of a geometric metasurface hologram reaching diffraction efficiencies of 80% at 825 nm and a broad bandwidth between 630 nm and 1,050 nm. The 16-level-phase computer-generated hologram demonstrated here combines the advantages of a geometric metasurface for the superior control of the phase profile and of reflectarrays for achieving high polarization conversion efficiency. Specifically, the design of the hologram integrates a ground metal plane with a geometric metasurface that enhances the conversion efficiency between the two circular polarization states, leading to high diffraction efficiency without complicating the fabrication process. Because of these advantages, our strategy could be viable for various practical holographic applications.

Broadband metasurfaces with simultaneous control of phase and amplitude.

By combining the freedom of both the structural design and the orientation of split ring resonator antennas, we demonstrate terahertz metasurfaces that are capable of controlling both the phase and amplitude profiles over a very broad bandwidth. As an example, we show that the phase-amplitude metasurfaces can be engineered to control the diffraction orders arbitrarily.