Metasurfaces are planar structures that can manipulate the amplitude, phase and polarization (APP) of light at subwavelength scale. Although various functionalities have been proposed based on metasurface, a most general optical control, i.e., indepe
ndent complex-amplitude (amplitude and phase) control of arbitrary two orthogonal states of polarizations, has not yet been realized. Such level of optical control can not only cover the various functionalities realized previously, but also enable new functionalities that are not feasible before. Here, we propose a single-layer dielectric metasurface to realize this goal and experimentally demonstrate several advanced functionalities, such as two independent full-color printing images under arbitrary elliptically orthogonal polarizations and dual sets of printing-hologram integrations. Our work opens the way for a wide range of applications in advanced image display, information encoding, and polarization optics.
Multifocal lens, which focus incident light at multiple foci, are widely used in imaging systems and optical communications. However, for the traditional design strategy, it combines several lenses that have different focal points into a planar integ
rated unit, resulting a low imaging quality due to the high background noise. Here, we propose two kinds of multifocal metalens with Au nanoslits arranged in an elliptical and a hyperbolic shape, which are able to effectively focus incident light at all of the foci with constructive interference, and extremely decrease the background noise and improve the lens imaging performance at the nanoscale. We further demonstrate that, the proposed metalens can possess a broadband operation wavelength changed from 600 nm to 900 nm, with its dual-polarity actively controlled by the incident circular polarization lights. With great agreement between the experimental and simulation results, our proposed conic-shaped metalens provides a significant potential for the future integrated nanophotonic device.
Ellipse and hyperbola are two well-known curves in mathematics with numerous applications in various fields, but their properties and inherent differences in spin optics are less understood. Here, we investigate the peculiar optical spin properties o
f the two curves and establish a connection between their foci and the spin states of incident light. We show that the optical spin Hall effect is the intrinsic optical spin property of ellipse, where photons with different spin states can be exactly separated to each of its two foci. While a hyperbola exhibits optical spin-selective effect, where only photons with one particular spin state can be accumulated at its foci. These properties are then experimentally demonstrated in near field by arranging nanoslits in conic shape. Based on the spin properties of the curves, we design spin-based plasmonic devices with various functionalities. Our results reveal the intrinsic optical spin properties behind conic curves and provide a route for designing spin-based plasmonic device.
