Continuous-zoom bifocal metalens by mutual motion of cascaded bilayer metasurfaces in the visible

Metalens, a subcategory of metasurfaces, has been widely investigated by virtue of its miniature and ultrathin characteristics as well as versatile functionalities. In this study, a tunable bifocal metalens with two continuous-zoom foci is proposed and numerically verified. This design utilizes two cascaded layers of metasurfaces, and different phase profiles for incidences of opposite helicities are imparted on each layer by the combination of geometric phase and propagation phase. When two layers of metasurfaces are actuated laterally, focal lengths of both foci are tuned continuously, with the difference of both focal lengths increasing or decreasing. Additionally, the zoom range for each focus can be designed at will, and the relative intensity of both tbci can be modulated by altering the ellipticity of incidence, with the focusing efficiency of the bifocal metalens varying from 19.8% to 32.7% for numerical apertures in a range from 0.53 to 0.78. The proposed device is anticipated to find applications in multi-plane imaging, optical tomography technique, optical data storage, and so on. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

In this study, a tunable bifocal metalens with two continuous-zoom foci is proposed and numerically verified. The design utilizes two cascaded layers of metasurfaces to achieve different focal lengths for incidences of opposite helicities. By laterally actuating the two layers of metasurfaces, the focal lengths of both foci can be continuously tuned, and the relative intensity of both foci can be modulated by altering the ellipticity of incidence.