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Metasurface polarization optics: From classical to quantum

Applied Physics Reviews

December 2024
11(4)

DOI:10.1063/5.0226286

Authors:

Shuai Wang

Show all 10 authorsHide

Metasurface polarization optics, manipulating polarization using metasurfaces composed of subwavelength anisotropic nanostructure array, has enabled a lot of innovative integrated strategies for versatile and on-demand polarization generation, modulation, and detection. Compared with conventional bulky optical elements for polarization control, metasurface polarization optics provides a feasible platform in a subwavelength scale to build ultra-compact and multifunctional polarization devices, greatly shrinking the size of the whole polarized optical system and network. Here, we review the recent progresses of metasurface polarization optics in both classical and quantum regimes, including uniform and spatially varying polarization-manipulating devices. Basic polarization optical elements such as meta-waveplate, meta-polarizer, and resonant meta-devices with polarization singularities provide compact means to generate and modulate uniform polarization beams. Spatial-varying polarization manipulation by employing the pixelation feature of metasurfaces, leading to advanced diffraction and imaging functionalities, such as vectorial holography, classic and quantum polarization imaging, quantum polarization entanglement, quantum interference, and modulation. Substituting conventional polarization optics, metasurface approaches pave the way for on-chip classic or quantum information processing, flourishing advanced applications in displaying, communication, imaging, and computing.

Overview of metasurface polarization optics. Metasurface provides a versatile platform for desired classical and quantum polarized source, manipulation, and detection devices, which are able to control the polarization of light in terms of either uniform polarized beam or structured spatially varying polarization profiles. Typical examples for polarized light source include circular polarization laser,⁵² polarization entangled photon-pair sources⁵⁷ with efficient and on-demand uniform polarized beam generation. Metasurface polarization manipulation devices include basic uniform polarization optical elements such as meta-waveplates⁵³ and vectorial holography elements⁵⁵ in classic regime and entanglement modulation⁶² and tomography devices⁵⁸ in quantum regime. In terms of metasurface polarization detection, single-shot full-Stokes parameters detector and imager⁶³ and multi-photon quantum entanglement state tomography³⁵ are widely explored.

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(a) Schematic of polarization ellipse. (b) Schematic of Poincaré sphere and the representation of a polarization state P (2 ψ, 2 χ) that located on the sphere.

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(a) Schematic of solid Poincaré ball. (b) Polarization ellipses for polarization states varies from (left) fully polarized (upper panel: linear, lower panel: circular) to (right) unpolarized.

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Birefringent metasurface waveplates. (a) Left panel: a schematic of a reflective metasurface HWP consisting of Si nanopillars, a PMMA spacer, and an Ag film as a highly efficient reflector. Right panel: the cross- and co-polarization reflection spectra of the designed metasurface. Reproduced with permission from Yang et al., Nano Lett. 14(3), 1394–1399 (2014). Copyright 2014 American Chemical Society.⁶⁵ (b) Left panel: schematic of the all-dielectric metasurface HWP made of Si nanopolars. Right panel: experimental and theoretical transmission spectra of the designed metasurface. Reproduced with permission from APL Photonics 1(3), 030801 (2016). Copyright 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.⁶⁷ (c) Left panel: a scheme of the reflective background-free metasurface QWP that is composed of two Au V-shaped nano-antenna unit cell. Right panel: simulated phase difference and the ratio of amplitudes between the two reflective waves with broadband performance. Reproduced with permission from Yu et al., Nano Lett. 12(12), 6328–6333 (2012). Copyright 2012 American Chemical Society.⁷⁰ (d) Left panel: schematic of the bilayer dielectric metasurface for high efficient QWP design. Right panel: simulated phase difference between cross- and co-polarization transmission coefficients under x-polarization incident beam. Reprinted with permission from Zhou et al., Light: Sci. Appl. 8(1), 80 (2019). Copyright 2019 Author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.⁷¹ (e) Left panel: schematic of angle-dependent birefringent metasurface waveplate for continuous polarization conversion consisting of optimized freeform meta-atoms. Right panel: experimental retardance with eigen-polarization state incidence. Reprinted with permission from Shi et al., Sci. Adv. 6(23), eaba3367 (2020). Copyright 2020 AAAS.⁵³ (f) Left panel: a scheme of multi-channel polarization conversion based on metagrating consisting of L-shaped scalable metallic meta-atoms. Right panel: experimental intensity ratio between target polarization and its orthogonal polarization in each diffraction order within designed wavelength region. Reprinted with permission from Gao et al., Phys. Rev. X 10(3), 031035 (2020). Copyright 2020 American Physical Society.⁷³

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Dichroism metasurface polarizer. (a) Gold helix nanostructure for the circular polarizer. Reprinted with permission from Gansel et al., Science 325(5947), 1513–1515 (2009). Copyright 2009 AAAS.⁷⁴ (b) Circular dichroism in planar chiral nanostructure made of copper strips arises from different conversion efficiencies of circular polarization. Reprinted with permission from Zheludev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97(16), 167401 (2006). Copyright 2006 American Physical Society.⁷⁷ (c) Large chiroptical effects in L-shaped gold nanostructures based on multimode interference. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. Appl. 7(5), 054003 (2017). Copyright 2017 American Physical Society.⁸⁵ (d) Strong chiral response induced by the spin-dependent destructive and constructive interference in dielectric birefringent metasurface. Reprinted with permission from Kenney et al., Adv. Mater. 28(43), 9567–9572 (2016). Copyright 2016 Author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.⁸⁰ (e) Giant circular polarization dichroism induced by the spin-dependent destructive and constructive interference based on planar dielectric metasurface. Reprinted with permission from Zhang et al., Adv. Funct. Mater. 27(47), 1704295 (2017). Copyright 2017 Author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.⁸¹ (f) Arbitrary polarization conversion dichroism metasurfaces for surface Poincaré sphere polarizers. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al., Light: Sci. Appl. 10(1), 24 (2021). Copyright 2021 Author(s), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.⁸² (g) Metasurface manipulating both DOP and SOP for full solid Poincaré sphere polarizer. Reprinted with permission from Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 130(12), 123801 (2023). Copyright 2023 American Physical Society.⁸⁴

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Metasurface polarization optics: From classical

to quantum

Cite as: Appl. Phys. Rev. 11, 041332 (2024); doi: 10.1063/5.0226286

Submitted: 30 June 2024 .Accepted: 1 November 2024 .

Published Online: 10 December 2024

Feng-Jun Li,

Shuai Wang,

Rui Zhong,

Meng-Xia Hu,

Yue Jiang,

Meijiu Zheng,

Mu Wang,

Xiangping Li,

Ruwen Peng,

3,a)

and Zi-Lan Deng

1,a)

AFFILIATIONS

Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Institute of Photonics Technology,

College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China

Qingdao Innovation and Development Center, Harbin Engineering University, Qingdao 26600, China

National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced

Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China

Note: This paper is part of the APR Special Topic on Quantum Metamaterials.

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed: rwpeng@nju.edu.cn and zilandeng@jnu.edu.cn

ABSTRACT

Metasurface polarization optics, manipulating polarization using metasurfaces composed of subwavelength anisotropic nanostructure array,

has enabled a lot of innovative integrated strategies for versatile and on-demand polarization generation, modulation, and detection.

Compared with conventional bulky optical elements for polarization control, metasurface polarization optics provides a feasible platform in a

subwavelength scale to build ultra-compact and multifunctional polarization devices, greatly shrinking the size of the whole polarized optical

system and network. Here, we review the recent progresses of metasurface polarization optics in both classical and quantum regimes, includ-

ing uniform and spatially varying polarization-manipulating devices. Basic polarization optical elements such as meta-waveplate, meta-

polarizer, and resonant meta-devices with polarization singularities provide compact means to generate and modulate uniform polarization

beams. Spatial-varying polarization manipulation by employing the pixelation feature of metasurfaces, leading to advanced diffraction and

imaging functionalities, such as vectorial holography, classic and quantum polarization imaging, quantum polarization entanglement, quan-

tum interference, and modulation. Substituting conventional polarization optics, metasurface approaches pave the way for on-chip classic or

quantum information processing, flourishing advanced applications in displaying, communication, imaging, and computing.

Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0226286

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION. ................................. 2

II. BASICS OF LIGHT POLARIZATION AND ITS

MANIPULATION ................................. 3

III. BASIC METASURFACE POLARIZATION OPTICAL

ELEMENTS WITH UNIFORM POLARIZATION

MANIPULATION . . . ............................. 5

A. Birefringent metasurfaces for waveplates. . . . ..... 5

B. Dichroism metasurfaces for polarizers . . ......... 7

C. Metasurface polarization beam splitters ......... 8

D. Resonant metasurfaces with polarization

singularity. . ................................. 9

IV. SPATIALLY VARYING METASURFACE

POLARIZATION OPTICS FOR CLASSIC

DIFFRACTION AND IMAGING APPLICATIONS . . . 11

A. Spatially varying polarization encoding based on

Malus metasurface. ........................... 11

B. Linear polarization multiplexed holography . . . . . . 13

C. Circular polarization multiplexed holography . . . . 15

D. Vectorial meta-holography . ................... 16

E. Metasurface-based polarization imaging . . ....... 17

F. Metasurface polarization optics empowered

advanced imaging and computing . . . ........... 19

V. METASURFACE POLARIZATION OPTICS FOR

QUANTUM APPLICATIONS....................... 20

A. Metasurfaces enabled polarized quantum sources . 21

B. Generation, modulation, and distribution of

quantum polarization entanglement . . ........... 22

C. Metasurface enabled polarization-entangled state

measurement . ............................... 24

Appl. Phys. Rev. 11, 041332 (2024); doi: 10.1063/5.0226286 11, 041332-1

Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing

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