Multifunctional ultrathin reflective metasurface via polarization-decoupled phase for arbitrary circularly or elliptically polarized waves

Metasurface offers a promising platform in the design of multifunctional devices owing to its unique ability for EMWs manipulation. However, wave-manipulation capabilities for metasurfaces face challenges in manipulating orthogonal EMWs with arbitrary circularly or elliptically polarized EMWs in the microwave region. Herein, single-layer reflective metasurfaces are proposed for independent manipulation of an arbitrary set of orthogonal circularly or elliptically polarized EMWs via polarization-decoupled phase. Taking advantage of single-layer anisotropic meta-atoms, the proposed metasurface can act as a tandem phase modulator, which introduces polarization-decoupled phase profiles for arbitrary circularly and elliptically polarized EMWs based on the Jones matrix. In this way, the proposed metasurface can distinguish a set of orthogonal EMWs with circular or elliptical polarization states and impose arbitrary phase profiles on them independently and simultaneously. For proof-of-concept, bifunctional metasurfaces operating in the microwave region are presented for independent manipulation of three different sets of orthogonal circularly or elliptically polarized EMWs. They create dual independent channels associated with a pair of orthogonal polarization states, performing functions including polarization beam splitting and orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing. Measured and simulated results show a good agreement, confirming that the proposed single-layer reflective metasurfaces are efficient devices that enable meta-devices to independently control arbitrary circular and elliptical polarized EMWs, achieving arbitrary functionalities. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

This study introduces single-layer reflective metasurfaces for independent manipulation of arbitrary sets of orthogonal circularly or elliptically polarized electromagnetic waves through polarization-decoupled phase. The proposed metasurface can distinguish and impose arbitrary phase profiles on a set of orthogonal EMWs with circular or elliptical polarization states independently and simultaneously.