Ultrawideband Reflection-Type Metasurface for Generating Integer and Fractional Orbital Angular Momentum

Vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are extensively studied owing to its potential to expand channel capacity of microwave and optical communication. By utilizing the Pancharatnam-Berry phase concept, an ultrawideband single-layer metasurface is proposed to realize the conversion from incident plane waves to reflected vortex beams covering a considerable bandwidth from 6.75 to 21.85 GHz (>105%). An equivalent circuit model combined with broadband phase shift network is developed to effectively design the meta-atoms in metasurface. It is the first time to design wideband metasurfaces with the phase-based characteristics. To verify the proposed model, some deformed square loop meta-atoms are proposed to construct the metasurfaces with broadband OAM characteristic. Moreover, the vortex beams with the integer (l = -3), fractional (l = -1.5), and high-order (l = -10) OAM mode are generated. Based on an OAM spectral analysis, the mode purity of the generated vortex waves is discussed in detail. The experimental results achieve a good agreement with those obtained from the simulation, thus proving the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method.