All-silicon chiral metasurfaces and wavefront shaping assisted by interference

Chiral metasurfaces have different electromagnetic responses with circularly polarized lights,showing as circular dichroism and optical activity.Here,a novel kind of all-silicon chiral metasurface is proposed by introducing destructive interference between achiral meta-atoms.The maximum value of circular dichroism spectra can reach 0.49.By adding an antireflective layer at the side of the silicon substrate,the maximum circular dichroism reaches 0.54.What is more,the bandwidth of circular dichroism greater than 0.4 reaches 0.15 THz.Two samples are fabricated to verify the feasibility of this scheme,and the experimental results are in good agreement with the simulations.In addition,the proposed scheme can also be used to generate various interesting functions,such as beam control and vortex generator.This flexible and efficient implementation solution of chiral metasurface can bring new ideas to the development of chiral devices in the future.

Terahertz wavefront shaping with multi-channel polarization conversion based on all-dielectric metasurface

Polarization manipulation of electromagnetic wave or polarization multiplexed beam shaping based on metasurfaces has been reported in various frequency bands.However,it is difficult to shape the beam with multi-channel polarization conversion in a single metasurface.Here,we propose a new method for terahertz wavefront shaping with multi-channel polarization conversion via all-silicon metasurface,which is based on the linear shape birefringence effect in spatially interleaved anisotropic meta-atoms.By superimposing the eigen-and non-eigen-polarization responses of the two kinds of meta-atoms,we demonstrate the possibility for high-efficiency evolution of several typical polarization states with two independent channels for linearly polarized waves.The measured polarization conversion efficiency is higher than 70%in the range of 0.9–1.3 THz,with a peak value of 89.2%at 1.1 THz.In addition,when more other polarization states are incident,combined with the integration of sub-arrays,we can get more channels for both polarization conversion and beam shaping.Simulated and experimental results verify the feasibility of this method.The proposed method provides a new idea for the design of terahertz multi-functional metadevices.

Manipulation of polarization conversion and multiplexing via all-silicon phase-modulated metasurfaces

Phase-modulated metasurfaces that can implement the independent manipulation of co-and cross-polarized output waves under circularly polarized[CP]incidence have been proposed.With this,we introduce one particular metasurface composed of meta-atoms with a phase difference of 2π/3 to generate specific elliptically polarized waves under various polarized incidences.Furthermore,a metasurface composed of these above meta-atoms and the meta-atoms with a phase difference of π/3 arranged in a certain rule can realize polarization conversion function between linearly polarized and CP states.The designs shed new light on multifarious optical devices and may further promote the development of metasurface polarization optics.

Broadband and tunable terahertz absorption via photogenerated carriers in undoped silicon

Terahertz absorbers based on doped silicon have achieved broadband and high-efficiency absorption due to their high concentration of carriers.However,their tunable performance is obviously insufficient.Here,we propose a new scheme for active terahertz absorption based on undoped silicon with a metamaterial antireflection layer,which realizes both strong absorption and ultrahigh modulation depth.Benefiting from the weak absorption and high transmission of undoped silicon for 1064-nm continuous wave,uniformly distributed carriers across the entire thickness of the absorber are excited,and efficient free carrier absorption of the terahertz wave is obtained.We use only a 500-μm thick absorber and achieve absorption greater than 90%in the range of 0.58 to 1.92 THz,with a peak value of 99%.More important,the absorber can be switched between two working states of nonabsorption and high-efficiency absorption by changing the pump power,which means the modulation depth reaches 100%.This simple and high-performance implementation scheme provides a new idea for the design of terahertz tunable absorbers.