Spin-Decoupled Transflective Spatial Light Modulations Enabled by a Piecewise-Twisted Anisotropic Monolayer

Wavefront control lies at the heart of modern optics. Metasurfaces with specifically tailored resonators can encode different phases to two orthogonal polarization components, but suffer from wavelength-dependent efficiency, sophisticated fabrication, and limited size. Liquid crystals, another excellent candidate for planar optics, are restricted to spin-coupled conjugated phase modulations. Planar optics with spin-decoupled functions is expected to release the multifunctionality of modern optics. Here, a spin-decoupled transflective spatial light modulator is presented with a piecewise-twisted anisotropic monolayer. The phases of reflected and transmitted light can be independently customized by preprogramming the initial orientations of the periodic helix and mirror-symmetric dual-twist configuration, respectively. A transflective orbital angular momentum encoder and decoder is demonstrated, which is simultaneously compatible with different multiplexing techniques. This work releases the multifunctionality of advanced planar optics and may upgrade existing devices in optical informatics.

Automated summary

This research presents a spin-decoupled transflective spatial light modulator that can independently control the phase of reflected and transmitted light. A transflective orbital angular momentum encoder and decoder compatible with different multiplexing techniques is demonstrated.