Bandwidth Unlimited Polarization-Maintaining Metasurfaces

Description

Any arbitrary state of polarization of a light beam can be decomposed into a linear superposition of two orthogonal direction of the oscillations, each of which has a specific amplitude of the electric field. The dispersive nature of diffractive and refractive optical components generally affects these amplitudes significantly over a small wavelength range, tumbling the light polarization properties. Although recent works suggest the realization of broadband nanophotonic interfaces that can mitigate frequency dispersion, their usage for arbitrary polarization control remains elusively chromatic. Here, we present a general method to address broadband full-polarization properties of diffracted fields using an original superposition of circular polarization beams transmitted through metasurfaces. This concept of polarization-maintaining metasurfaces is applied to realize complex broadband wavefront shaping, including beam deflectors and white-light holograms. Eliminating the chromatic dispersion and dispersive polarization response of conventional diffractive elements lead to broadband polarization-maintaining devices of interest for applications in polarization imaging, broadband-polarimetry, augmented/virtual reality imaging, full color display, etc.

Abstract

International audience

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